Shadowmarch

been visited by Gailon Tolly. If that jackal Hendon told the truth in this one thing, anyway, Gailon must have been arguing against the Autarch’s offer, not for it. I thought he was the one who brought it, but it seems I was wrong. In any case, your brother told me what he intended to do—to abandon your father’s belief that all the nations of Eion must be defended. Kendrick thought that he could convince the other monarchs to let the Autarch take Hierosol, and that m return the Autarch would release your father.

“Leaving aside whether or not it was honorable, I thought it a foolish gamble. We drank wine and we argued. We argued a long time, Kendrick and I, and bitterly. I told him that he was a fool to bargain with such a creature, especially a creature of such growing power—that I would sooner kill myself than let him do this to his kingdom. All my life I have watched the monarchs of Xis at work, Briony. I saw Tuan and a dozen other nations in Xand dragged in chains before the Falcon Throne, and it is said this Autarch is the worst of his whole mad line. But Kendrick was certain that the only way to withstand the Autarch in the long run was to have your father Olin lead a defensive coalition of northern nations—to give up Hierosol and the other decadent southern cities. A demon’s bargain, I called it—the kind that only the demon can win. Eventually, in drunken anger and despair and what I must admit was disgust as well, I… I left him. I passed Anissa’s maid in the hall—summoned by Kendrick, I assumed. She was pretty and had a saucy eye, so I thought little of it.”

A thought caught at Briony Kendrick said, “Isss . .” He could not remember the girl’s name. He was calling her “Anissa’s maid” or “servant” as he . . as he died. It was too dreadful to think on long, and she did not want to be distracted. “You say you simply left, Shaso. But when we found you, we were covered in blood!”

“As we disputed, as I raged against his foolishness, I . . turned my knife on myself. I told him… Oh, Briony, girl, I hate that these were the last words… the last words I spoke with him.” For a long moment it seemed that he wouldn’t continue. When he did, the rasp in his voice was harsher than before. “I told your brother I would cut my own arms from my body, the arms that had so long served his father, before letting them serve such a treacherous son. That I would stab myself in the heart. I was drunk—very drunk by then, and very angry. I could not bear facing Dawet dan-Faar across the table that night without wine and I had already had several cups before I went to your brother’s room. I have cursed myself for it in the darkness of that cell many times. Kendrick tried to wrestle the knife away from me. He was furious that I would argue with him, that I did not merely doubt his strategy but denounced it and him. We fought for the knife and I was cut again. Him, too, I think, but only a little. At last I came back to my right mind. He sent me away, making me swear on my debt to your father that I would not speak of what had happened no matter how much I disagreed with him.

“To tell you truth, even after you freed me, I would never have spoken of what he planned, poor Kendrick, the dishonor of bargaining with the bloody Autarch…”Again Shaso had to stop. Briony would have felt sorry for him but the newness of the betrayal was too much—Shaso’s for keeping stubbornly silent and her brother’s for thinking he knew more than their father, for thinking himself a king before he had gained the wisdom, for supposing he could manipulate a great and powerful enemy. “I… returned to my rooms,” Shaso went on. “I drank a great deal more wine, trying to make it all go away. When you came for me, I thought that Kendrick was still angry with me for insulting him, perhaps even that I had been too drunk and had hurt him in our scuffling, that I would be locked up for insulting him—made a slave again, after all these years. It only became clear to me later what had happened.”

“But, you fool, why didn’t you tell us?”

“What could I say? I gave my oath to your brother before he died that I would not speak of what had happened in that room. I was ashamed for myself and for him. And at first, before I understood the truth, my honor was outraged that you should come for me like a criminal, simply because I had disagreed with the prince regent. But when I learned what had happened, I told you that I hadn’t killed him, and that was the truth.” He trembled a little under her hand, which still touched his arm. “What does a man have if he gives up the bond of his word? He is worse than dead. Had Hen-don Tolly not told you what your brother planned, I would be silent still.”

Briony sat back, looking up at the jutting shadow of the castle. She was shiveringly cold and weary, still terrified by the night’s events. Somewhere in that darkened keep, she knew, armed men were searching for her and Shaso. “So where do we go?”

“South,” he said after a while. He sounded like he had fallen asleep for a few moments. “But after that? After we land? Do you have allies in mind?” South, she thought. Where Father is being held prisoner. “My brother,” she said out loud. “I… I’m afraid for him, Shaso.”

“Whatever happened, he did what he thought was best. His soul is at rest, Briony.”

For a moment her heart was startled up into her throat. Barrick? Did Shaso know something about him that she did not? Then she understood.

“I didn’t mean Kendrick. Yes, he did his best, the gods bless him and keep him. No, I mean Barrick.” It was hard to find the strength even to speak: the long day had finally caught up to her. Tears made the dark geometries of the keep even more blurry. “I miss him. I am afraid… I’m afraid something bad has happened.”

Shaso had nothing to say, but patted her arm awkwardly.

The boat slipped on, the oars moving steadily beneath Ena’s skillful hands. Briony felt like Zona in the famous tale, fleeing her home in the middle of the night. What was it Tinwright had written about that— overwritten, to be honest? “Clear-eyed, lion-hearted, her mmd turned toward the day when her honor will again be proclaimed…” But the goddess Zoria had been escaping from an enemy and fleeing back to her father’s house. Briony was leaving her home behind, perhaps forever. And Zoria was an immortal.

Midlan’s Mount with its walls and towers no longer loomed over them like a stern parent, but was beginning to recede, the bay widening between their little boat and the casde, the forested shore growing closer, a blackness along the southern horizon that blotted the starry sky. Only a few lights burned where she could see them in the castle’s upper reaches, a few in the Tower of Spring, a few lanterns in the guardhouses along the wall and atop the harbor breakwaters. She was filled with an unexpected, aching love for her home. All the things she had taken for granted, even some she had despised, the chilly, ancient halls as complicated as long stories, the portraits of glowering ancestors, the gray trees below her window in the Privy Garden that budded so bravely each cold spring —all had been stolen from her. She wanted it all back.

Shaso was asleep now, but Briony had missed her own chance at healing slumber. For this little while, anyway, she was queerly wakeful, exhausted but full of fretful thoughts. She could only sit and watch as the moon dove down through the sky and the waters of the bay grew wider between her and all of her life until this moment.

* * *

The streets of Funderling Town were lit but deserted, so that they had the feehng of unfinished scrapes instead of thoroughfares. Chert, walking like a man who had lately seen too many of the world’s strangest corners, could hear his footsteps echo from the stone walls of his neighbors’ houses as he trudged up Wedge Road and in through his own front door.

Opal heard him in the main room and rushed out from the back of the house, face full of misery and fear. He thought she would demand to know where he had been all these long, long hours, but instead she just grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the bedroom. She was moaning and he suddenly knew the worst had happened: the boy was dead.

To his shock, Flint was not dead but awake and watching. Chert turned to Opal, but she still had the look of someone who had discovered her most prized possession had been stolen.

“Boy?” he asked, kneeling beside him. “How do you feel?”

“Who are you?”

Chert stared at the familiar face, the shock of hair so pale as to be almost white, the huge, watchful eyes. Everything was the same and yet the child also seemed somehow slightly different. “What do you mean, who am I? I’m Chert, and this is Opal.”

“I… I don’t know you.”

“You’re Flint, we’re… we’ve been taking care of you. Don’t you remember?” Slowly, weakly, the boy shook his head. “No, I don’t remember you.”

“Well… if you’re not Flint, who are you?” He waited in a kind of airless terror for the answer. “What’s your name?”

“I said I don’t know!” the boy whined. There was something in him Chert had never seen before, a trapped and frightened animal behind the narrow face. “I don’t know who I am!”