Chert described what he had seen the day before in the hills north of the castle. The physician listened, asking few questions, and when the little man had finished, he didn’t speak for a long time. Flint was done examining the room and now sat on the floor, looking up at the tapestries and their twining patterns of stars.
“I am not surprised,” Chaven said at last. “I had… heard things. Seen things. But it is still fearful news.” “What does it mean?”
The physician shook his head. “I can’t say. But the Shadowline is something whose art seems far beyond ours, and whose mystery we have never solved. Scarcely anyone who passes it returns, and those who have done so are no longer in their right minds. Our only solace has been that it has not moved in centuries—but now it is moving again. I have to think that it will keep moving unless something stops it, and what would that be?” He rose, rubbing his hands together.
“Keep moving…?”
“Yes, I fear that now it has started the Shadowline will keep moving until it has swept across Southmarch— perhaps all of Eion. Until the land is plunged back into shadow and Old Night.” The physician frowned at his hands, then turned back to Flint. His voice was matter-of-fact but his eyes belied it. “Now I suppose I had better have a look at the boy.”
Moina and Rose and her other ladies, despite all their kind words and questions, could not stop Briony’s furious weeping. She was angry with herself for acting so wildly, so childishly, but she felt lost beyond help or even hope. It was as though she had fallen down a deep hole and was now beyond the reach of anyone.
Barrick pounded at the chamber door, demanding that she speak to him.
He sounded angry and frightened, but although it felt as if she were casting offa part of her own body, she let Rose send him away. He was a man— what did he know of how she felt? No one would dream of selling
“What goes on here?”
Treacherous Rose had opened the door, but it was not Barrick who had come in, only Briony s great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess Merolanna, sniffing. Her eyes widened as she saw Moina smothering the last of the flames and she turned on Briony. “What are you doing, child, trying to kill us all?'
Briony wanted to say yes, she was, but another fit of weeping overcame her. As the other ladies tried to fan the smoke out the open door, Merolanna came to the bed and sat her substantial but carefully groomed self down on it, then put her arms around the princess.
“I have heard,” she said, patting Briony’s back. “Do not be so afraid— your brother may refuse. And even if he doesn’t, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. When I first came here to wed your father’s uncle, years and years and years ago, I was as frightened as you are.”
“But Ludis is a m—monster!” Briony struggled to stop sobbing. “A murderer! The bandit who kidnapped our father! I would rather marry… marry anyone—even old Puzzle—before allowing someone like that…” It was no use. She was weeping again.
“Now, child,” Merolanna said, but clearly could think of nothing else to say.
Her great-aunt had gone, and Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread—and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.
A messenger had just arrived at the door, the third in an hour. She had returned no message to her older brother, and hadn’t been able to think of anything sufficiently cutting to send back to Gailon, Duke of Summerfield.
“This one comes from Sister Utta, my lady,” Moina said. “She sends to ask why you have not visited her today, and if you are well.”
“She must be the only one in the castle who doesn’t know,” said Rose, almost laughing that anyone could be so remote from the day’s events. A look at Briony’s tearstamed face and the lord constable’s niece quickly sobered. “We’ll tell her you can’t come…”
Briony sat up. She had forgotten her tutor entirely, but suddenly wanted nothing more than to see the Vuttish woman’s calm face, hear her measured voice. “No. I will go to her.”
“But, Princess…”
“I will go!” As she struggled into a wrap, the ladies-in-waiting hurried to pull on their own shoes and cloaks. “Stay here. I am going by myself.” The feared darkness having enfolded her now, she felt no need to waste her strength on niceties. “I have guards. Don’t you think that’s enough to keep me from running away?”
Rose and Moina stared at her in hurt surprise, but Briony was already striding out the door.
Utta was one of the Sisters of Zoria, priestesses of the virgin goddess of learning. Zona once had been the most powerful of goddesses, some said, mistress of a thousand temples and an equal of even her divine father Perin, but now her followers had been reduced to advising the Trigon on petty domestic policy and teaching highborn girl-children how to read, write, and—although it was not deemed strictly necessary in most noble families—to think.
Utta herself was almost as old as Duchess Merolanna, but where Briony s great-aunt was a royal barge, elaborately painted and decorated, the Vuttish woman was spare as a fast sailing ship, tall and thin, with gray hair cropped almost to her scalp. She was sewing when Briony arrived, and her pale blue eyes opened wide when the girl immediately burst into tears, but although her questions were sympathetic and she listened carefully to the answers, the priestess of Zona was not the type to put her arms around even her most important pupil.
When Briony had finished the story, Utta nodded her head slowly. “As you say, our lot is hard. In this life we women are handed from one man to another, and can only hope that the one we come to at last will be a kind steward of our liberties.”
“But no man owns you.” Briony had recovered herself a little. Something strong about Utta, the unassuming strength of an old tree on a windy mountainside, always calmed her. “You do what you want, without a husband or a master.”
Sister Utta smiled sadly. “I do not think you would wish to give up all I have given up to become so, Princess. And how can you say I have no master? Should your father—or now your brother—decide to send me away or even kill me, I would be trudging down Market Road within an hour or hanging from one of the mileposts.”
“It’s not fair! And I won’t do it.”
Utta nodded again, as if she was truly considering what Briony said. “When it comes to it, no woman can be turned against her own soul unless she wills it. But perhaps it is too early for you to be worrying. You do not know yet what your brother will say.”
“Oh, but I do.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “The council—in fact, almost all the nobles—have been complaining for months about the price of Father’s ransom, and they have also been telling Kendrick that I should be married off to some rich southern princeling to help pay for it. Then when he resists them, they whisper behind their hands that he is not old enough yet to rule the March Kingdoms. Here is a chance for him to stop their moaning in an instant. I’d do it, if I were him.”
“But you are not Kendrick, and you have not yet heard his decision.” Now Utta did an unusual thing, leaned over and for a moment took Briony’s hand. “However, I will not say your worries are baseless. What I hear of Ludis Drakava is not encouraging.”
“I won’t do it! I won’t. It is all so unfair—the clothes they always want me to wear, the things they want me to say and do . . and now this! I hate being a woman. It’s a curse.” Briony looked up suddenly. “I could become a priestess, like you! If I became a Sister of Zoria, my maidenhood would be sacred, wouldn’t it?”
“And permanent.” Utta could not quite muster a smile this time. “I am not certain you could join the sisterhood against your brother’s wishes, anyway. But is it not too early to be thinking of such things?”
Briony had a sudden recollection of the envoy Dawet dan-Faar, of eyes proud and leopard-fierce. He did not seem the type to stand around for weeks waiting for a defeated enemy to agree to the terms of surrender. “I don’t think I have much time—until tomorrow, perhaps. Oh, Sister, what will I do?'
“Talk to your brother, the prince regent. Tell him how you feel. I believe he is a good man, like your father. If there seems no other way… well, perhaps there is advice I might give you then, even assistance.” For a moment,
