Shadowmarch

the letter. How can I doubt you? Still, it is strange and the men will be restless when they hear.”

“The palace is an unsettled place just now,” she said with as much quiet meaning as she could muster. “Perhaps your men will be happy to find themselves away from Great Xis for a little while.”

Dorza gave her a hard stare. “Do you say there is trouble in the palace? Is our lord involved somehow?”

She had baited the hook; it would not do to pull at the line too hard. “I have no more to say, Captain. To the wise, a single word is as good as a poem.”

He went out then. Qinnitan fell back on the narrow bed, unable even to find the strength to protest when Pigeon curled up on the hard floor as though he really were her slave. Out of the confusion in her own head, she suddenly heard the oracle Mudry’s voice:

“Remember who you are. And when the cage is opened you must fly. It will not be opened twice.” Was this what the old woman had meant? Qinnitan couldn’t think anymore. She was too weary. I’m flying, Mother Mudry. At least, I’m trying to fly…

Within a few breaths she was asleep.

She woke for just a few short moments. Above her head bare feet thumped on the planks and voices rose, shouting instructions and singing songs of the hard sea life as the sailors of the Morning Star qfKirous prepared to journey to Hierosol.

39. Winter’s Eve

DANCING FOR WINTER:

Dust, dust, ice, ice

She wears the bones for eyes

She waits until the singing stops

—from The Bonefall Oracles

Puzzle was in surprisingly fine voice, a slight quaver the only thing to betray the passage of so many years. Otherwise, Briony might have thought time had turned tail, that she was again a little girl sitting on her father’s lap, the wind plucking in angry frustration at the roofs outside while they all sat safe and warm in the great dining hall.

But those days were gone, she reminded herself. Nothing would bring them back. And if Tyne had really lost the battle, it could be that soon no one alive would even remember those times.

Puzzle strummed his lute, continuing with the long, sad story of Prince Caylor and the Ever- Wounded Maid.

“… Then did he first glimpse her, the bleeding maid:”

The old jester crooned, telling of the knight’s entrance into the Siege of Always-Winter.

“He thought her sore hurt, e’en dead, and his noble heart.

Did quail with woe to think that such a bloom must fade. Before e’er it had been tasted by kiss, or figured by art; But then opened she her eyes, and, as she saw him there, Smiled, though her beauteous face was wan and sad— A pearl dtsplay’d upon the cushion of her golden hair—

And he thought no empress of the south could match the loveliness she had. Then Caylor’s heart flew like an unhooded hawk, straight to her breast, Although the troubled knight did not know whether he were curst or blest.”

She had to admit she was surprised, not so much to find that Puzzle could still sing, but by the grace of Matty Tinwright’s words. The young poet sat at the end of one of the front tables, near Puzzle’s stool, looking as though he knew he had actually done something worthwhile.

It was certainly a change from his dreadful, lugubrious paeans of praise to her, his comparisons of her to a virgin deity, full of aching stretches for rhymes—there were not many things that rhymed with “Zoria,” “merciful,” or “goddess,” after all. She was impressed and even pleased. She had given Tinwright a commission as much to irritate Barrick and amuse herself as anything else, but perhaps he would eventually prove a true poet after all.

Unless, she suddenly thought, he has stolen the whole thing from some obscure source. No, it was Winter’s Eve. She would be charitable. She would even say something nice to him, although nothing so fulsome as to fetch him puppy-dogging after her all evening.

“Thus, mstanter, Caylor pledged himself her slave, Declared that by her token whole worlds would he throw down, Yet she only shook her fair head and a reproachful look him gave, And raised her hands, white arms reaching from bloody-sleeved gown. Then said she, ‘Good knight, worlds shall not woo me, nor words, But only and you free me from this wound that steals my life Shall I be yours.

One year gone I spurned haughty Raven, Prince of Birds, And he did my breast pierce with his terrible slow knife All of the physick of my father’s court cannot staunch or even slow. The wound that dire blade to me gave, nor stop this crimson flow.’ ”

Briony even smiled at Puzzle, who barely noticed. He was enjoying this moment of attention so much that he seemed to forget it was the royal family to whom he owed his position, not the courtiers, who considered the old man a rather tiresome jest. Still, he was the center of all eyes, or should have been, and he clearly reveled in it.

The rest of the assembled nobility seemed strange to Briony. Conversation was awkward, many whispering, others speaking too loudly, even after an evening’s indulgence. The Tollys and their allies had made it clear they considered the feast as an insult to Gailon’s memory and had not appeared. Thus, there had been even more drinking than would be expected on Winter’s Eve, mulled wine being sluiced down throats as though many of those present expected the worst and expected it soon—for gossip about the possible fate of Southmarch’s army had sped through the castle all evening, tales of terror and defeat flying to every corner like little white moths rushing out of a long-closed wardrobe. Briony herself had needed to soothe Rose and Moina, both in tears, who were certain that they would be ravished by monsters.

Yes, and they were certain that Dawet and his Hierosol men would ravish them as well, Briony thought sourly. On that night. And precious little help they were to me or anyone else…

She shied away from any more thoughts of Kendrick’s death, let her mind instead hold the memory of Dawet dan-Faar. Surrounded by red-flushed, drunken faces, she found herself longing for his company. Not in a romantic way—she looked around as though even the thought might have been obvious to those around her, but the nobles were busy licking suet pudding from their fingers and calling for more wine. No, it would have been a pleasure simply because of the quickness of his wit. There was no blurnness in Dawet, who seemed always sharp as a knife. She doubted he drank at all, and felt certain that even if he did, few had ever seen him the worse for it…

Oh, by all the gods, what will we do? How will we save ourselves? It had been gnawing at her since she received Brone’s news and she couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. She couldn’t even bear to consider that anything might have happened to Barrick, but had to accept the possibility that Tyne Aldritch and his army had failed. What then? How could she and her nobles plan for a siege against such a mysterious force?

Thoughts turning round and round between those who were missing— she could not have imagined a Winter’s Eve so friendless, so bereft of family— and the malevolent creatures who seemed now to be separated from her beloved Southmarch Castle only by the narrow protection of the bay, Briony suddenly remembered that she had promised she would see her stepmother Anissa tonight Her first inclination was to send a servant to make her apologies, but as she looked around the room, at the sickly, over-cheerful faces of those who were still upright, at the ruin of the meal scattered down the tables, bones and shreds of skin and puddles of red wine like the remnants of some dreadful battle, she decided that she could think of nothing better than to walk for a time in the night air, and that a visit to her bedbound stepmother, who was only days away from giving birth at most, would be the most acceptable excuse.

Although it took some doing, she even managed to create in herself a small amount of sympathy for Anissa