“It’s time to get up, Briony,” Barrick said weakly, as if telling a he he did not think anyone would believe.
Avin Brone looked to the guard captain for help Vansen moved forward, hating what his duty made him do Brone already had one of the girl’s arms in his broad hands Vansen took the other, but Briony resisted, glaring at him with such complete hatred that he let her pull away.
“Princess!” Brone hissed. “Your older brother is dead and you cannot change that. Look around you. Look there.” “Leave me alone.”
“No, gods curse this night, look out the door!”
Outside the prince regent’s chamber dozens of pale faces hovered silently in the corridors, phantoms of lantern light, the castle’s residents were crowded there, watching in disbelief and horror.
“You and your brother are the heads of the Eddon family now,” Brone told her in a harsh whisper. “The people need to see you be strong. Your grief should wait until you are private. Can you not stand and be strong for your people?”
At first she seemed more likely to spit at him than speak, but after a long moment Briony shook her head, then wiped her cheeks and eyes with the back of her hand.
“You are right, Lord Constable,” she said. “But I will not forgive you for it.”
“I am not in my post to be either loved or forgiven, Mistress Come, you are in mourning, but you are still a princess. Let us all get on with what we have to do here.” He offered her his wide arm.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Barrick?”
Her twin took an unsteady step toward her. “Are we…?”
“We will go to the chapel.” Briony Eddon’s face was a mask now, hard and pale as fired white clay. “We will pray for Kendrick there. We will light candles. And if the lord constable and this supposed captain of the guard manage to find the one who killed our brother under their very noses, we will be composed to pass fitting sentence on him.”
Taking her brother’s arm, she stepped around Ferras Vansen without a look, as though he were a cow or sheep, something too stupid to clear the way of its own volition. As she passed, he could see that her eyes were brimming over again but that she held her head straight. The servants and others in the hall shrank back against the walls to let them pass Some called out fearful questions, but Briony and her brother walked through them as though they were no more than trees, their voices only the rush of the wind.
“Eminence, will you go with them?” Avin Brone asked Hierarch Sisel when the twins had passed from earshot. “We need them out of the way so we may do our work, but my heart sinks for them and for the kingdom. Will you go and lead them in prayers, help them to find strength?”
Sisel nodded and followed the prince and princess. Vansen could not help being impressed at the way his master had dispatched the hierarch—a man of the gods who answered only to the Trigonarch himself in distant Syan—as though he were a lowly groom.
When they were all gone, Brone scowled and spat. Such disrespect in the prince’s death chamber shocked Vansen, but the lord constable seemed caught up with other things. “At least the Raven’s Gate is closed for the night,” he growled. “But, tomorrow, word of this will move from house to house through the city like a fire, and will be carried to all the lands around, whether we like it or not. We cannot shut out questions or seal in the truth. The young prince and princess will need to show themselves soon or we will have great fear in the people.”
He certainly looked the type. The lord constable was as tall as Vansen, who was not a small fellow, but Brone was almost twice as wide, with a huge bushy beard and shoulders as broad as his substantial belly. In his black cloak—which Ferras suspected he had simply thrown over his night things, then stuffed his feet into boots— the older man looked like a rock on which a ship might founder… or on which a great house might be built. And there were others in the kingdom who might also think themselves a good size to wear a crown.
As the physician Chaven busied himself with the prince’s body, Avin Brone moved to stand over the two slain guardsmen. “This one is Gwatkin, yes? I do not recognize the other.”
“Caddick—a new fellow.” Ferras frowned Just days earlier the men had been mocking Caddick Longlegs for never having kissed a girl. Now the youth was new in death as well. “There would have been two more here, but I thought I would rather keep an eye on the end of the keep where the foreigners are lodged.” He swallowed an abrupt surge of bile. “There should have been two more to guard the prince…”
“And have you spoken to those guards yet? By the gods, man, what if they are all dead and the foreigners are now ranging the keep with bloody swords?”
“I have long since sent a messenger and had one back One of my best men leads them—Dyer, you know him—and he swears the Hierosoline envoy and his company have not left their rooms.”
“Ah.” Brone nudged one of the guards’ bodies with his boot toe. “Slashed. A bit fine for swordplay, looks like. But how could a troop of men attack and murder the prince without anyone knowing? And how could something smaller than a troop do such grim work?'
“I do not know how it could be a troop and go unnoticed, my lord. The corridors were not empty.” Ferras stared at Gwatkin’s wide-eyed face, the jaw hanging open as though death had been more a surprise than anything else. “But the servants did hear something earlier in the evening—arguing, some shouting, but muffled. They could make out no words and did not recognize the voices, but all agreed it did not sound like men fighting for their lives.”
“Where are the prince’s bodyservants? Where are his pages?”
“Sent away.” Ferras could not help but smart a little under Brone s questioning. Did the lord constable think that because Guard Captain Vansen’s father was a farmer, the son had no wit? That he hadn’t thought to see to these things himself? “The prince himself sent them away. They thought it was because he wanted to be alone, either to think or perhaps to discuss his sister’s fate privately with someone.”
“Someone?'
“They do not know, Lord. He was alone when he sent them away. They ended by sleeping in the kitchen with the potboys. It was one of the pages, returning for a religious trinket of some sort, who found the dying prince and raised the alarm.”
“I will speak to that one, then.” Brone carefully lowered his heavy frame into a squat beside the murdered guardsmen. He pulled at the nearest man’s jerkin. “He is wearing armor.”
“Most of the blood on him comes from a slashed throat. That is what killed him.” “The other, too?”
“His throat was slashed and bleeding, but that wasn’t what did for him, my lord. Look at his face.” Brone squinted at the second body. “What happened to his eye?”
“Something sharp went through it, my lord. And deep into his skull, too, from what I can see.” Avin Brone whistled in surprise and levered himself upright like a bear stumbling out of its cave in spring. “If we cannot find a troop of assassins, then have we but one killer? Our murderer must be a fine fighter, to kill two armored men. And Kendrick is not clumsy with a sword either.” Startled by his own words, Brone made a pass-evil. “
“We have seen no sign of any weapon yet except the guards.’ ” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps somehow the prince was attacked first. Perhaps he sent these guards out on some errand as he did his other servants, and they returned to find the murderer had already struck.”
Brone turned to Chaven, who had removed the golden cloth and was probing at the body. The prince regent already looked like a tomb-statue, Ferras thought, cold and white as marble. “Can you guess what killed him?” the lord constable asked.
The royal physician looked up, his round face troubled. “Oh, yes. No, better to say, I can show you why he died. Come look.”
Ferras and the lord constable moved to the bedside. Now it was Ferras who helplessly made the pass-evil—a fist around his thumb to keep Kernios the death god from noticing him. He had seen many score of violent deaths since his childhood, but he had not made the gesture for as long as he could remember.
The prince’s bloodless pallor and yellow hair made him appear disquietingly like his younger sister—Ferras suddenly felt troubled to be looking on his helpless nakedness, although he had often seen Kendrick bathing in the river after a long, dusty hunt. The corpse’s arms were covered with shallow slashes now cleaned of blood—wounds
