the castle treasury in the dangerous days of the marauding Gray Companies, a large but windowless space with only two doors, nested in the maze of corridors behind the throne hall. The captain of the royal guard had never much liked the stark, stony room: it was the kind of place built for last stands, for the dreadful heroics of defeat and disaster.
The guard captain had been furious at first that Lord Brone should treat their news so offhandedly, ordering it held until the end of a long council session full of far more trivial matters, but as first one hour passed, then another, Vansen had come to believe he understood Brone’s thinking. Many days had passed since Prince Kendrick’s death—a killing still unexplained as far as most of the people of Southmarch were concerned, even if the murderer himself had been captured. The business of the land had been almost uniformly ignored since then, and many things had already waited in pressing need of answer before the prince regent died. If Vansen had been allowed to present his own news first, it was possible that none of this other business would have had its audience.
So he waited—but it was not easy.
He let his eye rove across the dozen noblemen who made up today’s council, playing a game of anticipating an attack on the royal twins first by this one, then by that, and trying to decide how he would counter it. The nobles looked bored,Vansen thought. They didn’t seem to realize that after the recent events boredom was a privilege, perhaps even a luxury no one could afford.
Ferras also thought young Prince Barrick still appeared very ill, although perhaps the boy was just careworn. Whatever the cause, Barrick was certainly not paying the closest attention to the business of the kingdom. As case after case came up before them—the rents on royal lands in need of attention, official embassies of grief and support fromTalleno, Ses-sio, and Perikal to be heard, important property disputes that had come up from the assize courts or the temple courts needing a final decision—the young prince barely seemed to attend the speakers. In most cases he simply waited for Briony to speak, then nodded his head in agreement, all the while rubbing the crippled arm that he held in his lap like a pet dog. Only a question from Lord Nynor the castellan seemed to awaken the boy from his lethargy at last and kindle a light in his eye: Nynor wanted to know how much longer the Hierosoline envoy Dawet dan-Faar would be with them, since the household purse had made allotment for only a fortnight’s stay. But although he was clearly interested, Barrick became, if anything, even more silent and unmoving as Briony answered the question. The princess said that they could not of course hurry a reply to the man who held her father’s safety in his hands, especially at so troubled a time. She seemed almost as distracted as her brother. Ferras Vansen thought that Barrick did not seem to like her answer much, but the prince made no spoken objection and Nynor was left to go grumbling off to rearrange the household finances.
The princess and her brother dispatched several dozen such questions over the course of two hours. The gathered nobles of the council offered suggestions, and on some occasions dissenting opinions as well, but mostly they seemed to be watching the twins at their new task—watching them and judging them. Gailon of Summerfield made none of his usual objections, and in fact seemed to be as absorbed by his own thoughts as the prince and princess were by theirs. When the subject of the envoy Dawet came up, it seemed Gailon might say something, but the moment passed and the handsome duke resumed picking at the leg of the council table with a small ceremonial dagger, barely hiding what was obviously some great frustration, although Ferras Vansen had no idea what its cause might be. For the first time Vansen could see Summerfield’s duke for what he really was, despite all his power and wealth a man younger than Vansen himself, and one with less training in silence and patience as well.
The afternoon wore on, bringing nothing more interesting than reports of a sharp increase in the number of strange creatures that seemed to be coming from across the Shadowline. Something with spines and teeth had badly injured some children near Redtree, and a man had been killed by a goat with black horns and no eyes, which the locals had promptly captured, killed, and burned, but most of the reports were of creatures that seemed harmless despite their strangeness, many of them crippled or dying, as though they had not been prepared for the world on this side of the unseen barrier.
At last even the novelty of these tales began to fade. Some of the council members began to ignore the proceedings and talk openly among themselves despite sharp looks from Brone. Vansen was intrigued to see that the lord constable seemed also to have taken up the role of first minister, a position unfilled since the old Duke of Summerfield’s death a year earlier. He wondered if this was part of the reason for the young duke’s disgruntlement. So many things are out of joint since the king went away, he thought.
“And now, if it pleases you, Highnesses,” Avin Brone announced after a long dispute over the construction of a new Trigonate temple had left most of the table yawning, “there is some important business we have saved until last.”
Several of the nobles, slumped and weary, actually straightened up, their attention finally caught Vansen was about to fetch the witness when Brone surprised him by turning his back on him and summoning in two people Vansen had never even seen, a round-eyed man and a young girl. The man was bald as a turtle, although otherwise he seemed of healthy middle years, and even the girl was odd to look upon she seemed to have plucked out her eyebrows entirely, as in the style of a hundred years before, and her hairline began far up her forehead. She wore a skirt and shawl that mostly hid her form, but the man certainly had the bulging chest and long, muscled arms typical of his kind.
“Highnesses,” Avin Brone declared, “this is the fisherman Turley Longfingers and his daughter. They have something they wish to tell you.”
Barrick stirred. “What is this, the entertainment? Have we put old Puzzle out to graze at last and found some new talents?”
Briony gave her brother a look of irritation. “The prince is tired, but he’s right about one thing—this is unusual, Lord Brone. It feels like a bit of mummery, saved till last.”
“Not last, I am afraid,” responded the lord constable. “There will be more. But forgive the surprise. I did not know whether they would come forth and tell this story until just before the council came to the table. I have been chasing down the rumor for days.”
“Very well.” Briony turned to the fisherman, who was squeezing an already shapeless hood or hat in the clawlike hands that must have given him his name. “He said your name is Turley?'
The man swallowed. Vansen wondered what could make one of the normally imperturbable Skimmers, folk who routinely swam with sharks and killed them with knives when it was needful, look so harrowed. “Turley, yes,” he said in a thick voice. “It is that, my queen.”
“I’m not a queen and my brother isn’t a king. The real king is our father, and he still lives, thank all the gods “ She looked at him closely. “I have heard that among yourselves you Skimmers don’t use Connoric names.”
Turley’s eyes widened. They had very little white around the edges. “We do have our own talk, Majesty, that’s true.” “Well, if you would prefer to use a name like that, you may.”
He looked for a moment as though he might actually bolt the room, but at last shook his gleaming head. “Prefer not, Majesty. Close-held, our names and talk. But no harm done to tell you of our clan. Back-on-Sunset-Tide, we are called.”
She smiled a little, but her brother beside her just looked aggrieved. “A very fine name. Now why has Lord Brone brought you before the council?”
“My daughter Ena’s tale it is, truly, but she was frightened to speak before them as high as yourselves, so came I with her.” The man stretched out his long arm and his daughter moved against him. In her odd way, with her small stature and huge, watchful eyes, Vansen thought the girl almost pretty, but he could not ignore that oddity entirely: the Skimmers carried their strangeness around with them like a cloak. He had never yet talked to one without being reminded several times by his eyes and ears and even his nose that it was a Skimmer he was speaking to and not an ordinary person.
“Very well, then,” said Briony. “We are listening.”
“On the night…What happened, it was on the night before the night of the killing,” said Turley. Briony sat a
