Shadowmarch

“I don’t want to hear any more.” He was tired and his head hurt. He still felt deathly ill—felt as though he would never again be truly well. He wanted only to go back to what he had been doing, bouncing the hard leather ball against the floor that had already been pitted with age in his great-grandfather’s day, thinking about nothing.

“Please, Barrick, I beg of you.” Gailon Tolly, Duke of Summerfield, was doing his best to keep impatience from his voice. It amused Barrick, but it angered him too.

“Prince Barrick. I am prince regent, now. I am not your little cousin any longer and you cannot treat me that way.” Gailon bobbed his head. “Of course, Highness. Forgive my disrespect.”

Barrick smiled. “Better. Well, then, tell it to me again.”

“I have…” The duke regained his look of patience. “It is simply this. Your sister has seen the envoy from Ludis again this morning. The black man, Dawet.”

“By herself? Behind closed doors?”

Gailon colored. “No, Highness. In the garden, with others present.”

“Ah.” Barrick bounced the ball again. It did trouble him, but he wouldn’t show it and give Gailon the satisfaction. “So my sister, the princess regent, was talking in the garden to an envoy of the man who’s holding our father prisoner.”

“Yes, but…” Gailon scowled and turned to Avin Brone. “Prince Barrick does not want to understand me, Brone. You explain.”

The mountainous lord constable shrugged, a motion that looked as if it might start an avalanche. “She appears to enjoy the man’s company. She listens very closely to what he has to say.”

“While you were ill, he had a long audience with her, Highness,” said Gailon. “She ignored everyone else who was present.”

Ignored, thought Barrick. Through all the disturbing images that had not entirely left his head, through weariness and the strands of fever that still draped him like cobwebs, it was a word whose meaning he understood immediately. “She is paying more attention to him than to you, is that what you mean, Gailon?”

“No… !”

“It seems to me that you are trying to drive a wedge between my sister and myself.” Barrick flung the leather ball down against the floor. It hit on the edge of a flagstone and went bouncing across the room. Two young pages dove out of the way as one of the larger dogs scrambled after it, then chased it into a corner behind a chest and growled in excited frustration. “But my sister and myself are almost the same thing, Duke Gailon. That is what you must know.”

“You wrong me, Highness.” Gailon turned to Brone, but the big man was watching the dog rooting behind the chest, making it clear that he wanted no responsibility for the duke’s little embassy. “We are in a terrible time. We need to be strong—all the houses of Southmarch must stand together, Eddons, Tollys, all of us. I know that. But neither should the common people begin to whisper of… dalliances between your sister and your father’s kidnappers.”

“You go too far.” Barrick was angry, but it was a distant fury like lightning over far hills. “Leave this room now and I will forgive your clumsy tongue, Gailon, but be careful. If you say such things in front of my sister, you may find yourself fighting for honor, and she will not ask for a champion. She will fight you herself.”

“By the gods, is this whole family mad?” the duke cried, but Brone already had Gailon Tolly’s shoulders and was steering him toward the door, whispering words of calm in his ear. The lord constable gave Barrick an odd look as he urged Gailon out, something that could equally have been surprised approval or disdain imperfectly masked.

Barrick did not feel strong enough to try to make sense of it all. In the three days he had been out of bed, through the ghastly funeral and the equally drawn-out and exhausting ceremony in the castle’s huge, incense- choked Trigonate temple that had conferred the regency on both Briony and himself, he had never felt entirely well. That terrible fever had swept through him like a wildfire through a forest glade. Fundamental things were gone, roots and branches, and they would take time to grow back. At the same time, the fever itself seemed to have left behind unfamiliar spores, seeds of new ideas which he could feel quickening inside him, waiting to hatch.

What will I become? he wondered, staring at his bent left hand. I was already a monster. Already a target for scorn, haunted by those terrible dreams, by… by Father’s legacy. Am I a target for treachery now as well? These new thoughts would not go away, feelings of distrust that scratched away at him at all hours, sleeping and waking, like rats in the walls. He had prayed and prayed, but the gods did not seem to care enough to relieve his misery.

Should I be listening to Gailon more carefully about this? But Barrick did not trust his cousin at all. Everyone knew that Gailon was ambitious, although he was by no means the worst of his family: his brothers, sly Caradon and the dangerously reckless Hendon, made the Duke of Sum-merfield seem almost maiden-shy by comparison. In fact, Barrick did not trust any of the Southmarch nobles, not Brone, not Tyne Aldritch of Blueshore, not even the old castellan, Nynor, no matter how valuable a servant any of them had been to his father. He trusted nobody but his sister, and now Gailon’s words had begun to eat away at that bond, too. Barrick stood up, so full of rage and unhappiness that even the dog shied away. His two pages waited, solemn-faced, watching him as small animals watch a larger one who might be hungry. He had shouted at them more than a few times since dragging himself out of his fever-bed, and had struck both of them at least once.

“I must dress now,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

The council was meeting in an hour. Perhaps he should ask Briony straight out what her business was with the dark man, the envoy. The memory of Dawet’s lean brown face and superior smile sent a little shudder of unease up Barrick’s spine. It was so much like something from the fever dreams, those shadowy, heartless creatures that pursued him. But waking life had also been nightmarish since then. It was all he could do to remind himself that he was awake, that the walls were solid, that eyes did not watch him from every corner.

I almost told Briony about Father, he realized. That was one thing he must never do. It could be the end of any happiness either of them would ever have together. “I am waiting, curse it!”

The pages had been lifting his dark, fur-trimmed gown out of the chest; now they hurried toward him, awkward beneath the weight, bearing the heavy thing like the body of a dead foe.

What did Briony want with that envoy? And more importantly, why hadn’t she told him, her brother? He couldn’t help remembering that she had seemed quite prepared to take the regency without him, to leave him alone in his bed of pain.

No. He forced the thoughts away but they did not go far: like starving beggars rebuffed, they moved only out of immediate reach. No, not Briony. If there is anyone I can trust, it is Briony.

His knees were shaking as the two young pages stood on their toes to drape the gown across his shoulders. He did not need to see these boys’ faces. He knew they were looking at each other. He knew they thought something was wrong with him.

Am I still fevered? he wondered. Or is this the thing that Father spoke of? Is this the true beginning of it?

For a moment he was back in the shadowed passages of his illness, looking down a great distance into red- shot darkness. He could see no way out.

* * *

Sister Utta’s long face showed amusement, but concern as well, and she spoke carefully. “I think it is a very bold idea, Highness.”

“But not a good one, is that what you’re saying?” Briony fidgeted. So many things were moving inside her these days, a torrent of feeling and need and sometimes even . . well, it felt like strength, the kind that she had been asked to hide over and over again. All of these competing forces yanked at her limbs and thoughts as though she were on puppet strings. “You think I am asking for trouble. You want me not to do it.”

“You are the princess regent now,” said Utta. “You will do as you see fit. But this is a disturbed time—the waters are roiled and muddy. Is it really the time for the mistress of the nation to wear what everyone will think of