Shadowmarch

then kill herself. She lived so many lives in that hour, both grim and fanciful, that at last she slipped into a true dream without knowing it— a kinder one this time, the twins playing at hide-and-seek with Kendrick, children together once more—and slept through the midnight bell. But she did not sleep through the shriek that came just a short while later.

Briony sat upright in bed, half certain she had imagined it. Nearby young Rose squirmed in her sleep, lost in some nightmare of her own.

“The black man… ” the girl moaned.

Briony heard it again—a terrified wail, growing louder Moina was awake now, too. Something banged hard on the chamber door and Briony almost fell out of her bed in fright.

“The Autarch!” Moina squealed, plucking at the charm she wore about her neck. “Come to kill us all in our beds …”

“It is only one of the guards,” Briony told the Helmingsea girl harshly, trying to convince herself as well. “Go and take off the bolt.”

“No, Princess! They’ll ravish us!”

Briony pulled her dagger from beneath her mattress, then wrapped the blanket around her and stumbled to the door, heart fluttering as she called out to learn who was on the other side. The voice was not one of the guards’, but even more familiar as the door opened, Briony’s great-aunt Merolanna flapped into the room, her nightdress askew, her long gray hair down on her shoulders, crying, “Gods preserve us! Gods preserve us!” “Why is everyone shouting?” Briony asked, fighting against growing dread. “Is it a fire?”

Merolanna stumbled to a halt, panting and peering short-sightedly. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Briony, is that you? Is it? Oh, praise the gods, I thought they had taken you all.”

The old woman’s words ran through her like icy water. “All ? What are you talking about?” “Your brother— your poor brother.

The chill threatened to stop her heart. She cried, “Barrick?' and shoved past Merolanna. There were no guards outside, but the passage was full of disembodied sounds, wails and distant shouting, and as she emerged into the high-ceihnged Tribute Hall, she found it full of people drifting confusedly in the near-darkness, calling questions or babbling religious oaths, a few carrying candles or lamps, and all in their nightclothes. The vast hall, strange even in bright daylight with its weird statues and other objects brought back from foreign lands, like the stuffed head of the great-toothed ohphant that hung above the fireplace and was as ugly as any demon in the Book of the Trigon, now also seemed filled with pale ghosts Steffans Nynor, wearing a ridiculous sleeping cap and with his beard tied up in a strange little bag, stood in the center of the room shouting orders, but no one was listening to him. The scene was all the more dreamlike because no one stopped Briony or even spoke to her as she ran past them. Everyone seemed to be going in the wrong direction.

She reached the hall outside Barrick’s chamber but found it deserted, her brother’s door closed. She had only a moment to wonder at this before something grabbed her arm. She let out a small, choked shriek, but when she saw whose wide-eyed face was beside her she grabbed at him and pulled him close. “Oh, oh, I thought you Merolanna said…”

Barrick’s red hair was disheveled from bed, wild as a gale-blown haystack. “I saw you go past.” He seemed like one dragged from sleep yet still dreaming, his eyes wide but curiously empty. “Come. No, perhaps you shouldn’t.

“What? Her relief vanished as swiftly as it came. “Barrick, what in the name of all the gods is going on?” He led her around the corner into the main hall of the residence. The corridor was full, and guards armed with halberds were pushing servants and others back from the door of Kendrick’s chambers. She suddenly realized her misunderstanding.

“Merciful Zoria,” she whispered.

Now she could see in the light of the torches that Barrick s face was not empty, but slack with horror, his lips trembling. He took her hand and pulled her through the crowd, which shrank back from them as though the twins might carry some plague. Several of the women were weeping, faces grotesque as festival masks.

The guards kneeling around the body glanced up at the twins’ approach but for a moment did not seem to recognize them Then FerrasVansen, the captain of the royal guard, stood, his face full of dreadful pity, and yanked one of the crouching soldiers out of the way. The prince regent’s room was full of terrible smells, slaughterhouse smells. They had turned Kendrick onto his back His face gleamed red in the torchlight.

There was so much blood that for a fleeting instant she could tell herself it was someone else, that this horror had been visited on some stranger, but Barrick’s groan destroyed the flimsy hope.

Her dagger fell from her hand and clinked onto the flags Her knees sagged and she half fell, then crawled toward her older brother like a blind animal, tangling herself for a moment with one of the guards as he mumbled a prayer. Kendrick’s face twitched. One blood-slicked hand opened and closed.

“He’s alive!” Briony screamed. “Where is Chaven? Has someone sent for him?” She tried to lift Kendrick, but he was too wet, too heavy. Barrick pulled her back and she struck at her twin. “Let me go! He’s alive!” “He can’t be.” Barrick, too, was in some other world, his voice confused and distant. “Just look at him.”

Kendrick’s mouth worked again and Briony almost climbed on top of him, so desperate was she to hear him speak, to know that he was still her brother, that life was in him. She searched for his wounds so she could stop them up, but the whole front of him was soaking wet, his shirt in tatters and the skin beneath it just as ragged. “Don’t,” she said in his ear. “Hold on to me!” Her brother’s eyes rolled; he was trying to find her. His mouth opened. “… Isss…” A sibilant whisper that only Briony could hear.

“Don’t leave us, oh, dear dear Kendrick, don’t.” She kissed his bloody cheek. He let out a whimper of pain, then curled as slowly as a leaf on hot coals until he was lying on his side, bent double. He kicked, whimpered again, then the life was out of him.

Barrick still pulled at her, but he was weeping, too— Everyone is crying, Briony thought, the whole world is crying. Dimly, as though it were happening in another country, she could hear people shouting down the corridor.

“The prince is dead! The prince has been murdered!”

Guard Captain Vansen was trying to lift her away from Kendrick. She turned and slapped at him, then grabbed at the man’s heavy tunic and tried to pull him down, so full of fury she could barely think.

“How did this happen?” she shrieked, her thoughts as red and slippery as her hands. “Where were you? Where were his guards?You are all traitors, murderers!”

For a moment Vansen held her at arm’s length, then his face convulsed with grief and he released his grip. Briony scrambled to her feet, struck hard at his shoulders and face. Ferras Vansen did nothing more to defend himself than lower his head until Barrick pulled her off.

“Look!” her brother said, pointing. “Look there, Briony!”

Her eyes blurred with tears, she did not at first understand what she was seeing—two stained lumps of shadow on the floor beside the prince regent’s bed Then she saw the Eddon wolf on the slashed tunic of one of the figures and the pool of blood a shiny blackness beneath them both, and understood that Kendrick’s guards, too, were dead.

7. Sisters of the Hive

DAYS:

Each light between sunrise

And sunset Is worth dying for at least once

—from The Bonefall Oracles

The smoky scent of the jasmine candles and the perpetual sleepy buzz of the Hive temple, the half- frightened, half-exalted breathing of the other girls, all the sounds and odors that surrounded her at the moment the world changed beyond all recognition would never again completely leave her mind. But how could it be otherwise?