bear brought to the castle during the last Pennsday feast and made to dance in the throne room. All the courtiers had laughed—he had even laughed himself to see its clumsy antics and hear its snort of irritation, so like a man’s, when its trainer flicked its bandy legs with a whip. Only Briony had been angry.
His father had not laughed either, he suddenly remembered. For on that Pennsday they had all still been together, Olin here in Southmarch, Kendrick alive, everything as it should be. Now all had changed, and since the fever even his own thoughts had become strange and untrustworthy.
He forced himself to concentrate, staring at Shaso with what he hoped was the proper expression of a ruling prince to a traitorous vassal. Despite the ankle-chain half hidden by the straw on the floor of the stronghold, its far end socketed into the stone wall, the Tuani man looked less like a bear than a captured lion.
You could never make a lion dance on its chain.
“There should be guards,” said Avin Brone. “It is not safe…”
“You are here with us,” Briony replied sweetly. “You are a famous fighter, Lord Constable.” “So is Lord Shaso, with all respect.”
“But he is chained and you are not. And he is not armed.”
Shaso stirred. Barrick had always found it hard to think of him as anything but ageless, but now the man’s years showed in his slack skin and gray-whiskered cheeks. He had been given clean clothes, but they were poor and threadbare. Except for the muscles that still rippled in his forearms and the back that had not yet learned to bend, this old man might have been a street beggar in Hierosol or one of the other southern cities. “I will not hurt you,” he growled. “I am not fallen so low.”
Barrick fought down a gust of anger. “Is that what you told our brother before you killed him?”
The prisoner stared. His dark face seemed lightened, as though a layer of fine dust had sifted down onto him from the surrounding stones, or as if his time in the sunless depths had leached out some of his color. “I did not kill your brother, Prince Barrick.”
“Then
“I have told Brone already. When I left Kendrick, he was alive.” “But your dagger was bloodied, Shaso. We found it in your room.” The old Tuani warrior shrugged.” It was not the prince’s blood.”
“Whose was it?” Briony took another step closer, which made even Barrick uncomfortable—she was within the compass of the old man’s chain now, and all three of his visitors knew his cat-quickness. “Just tell me that.”
Shaso looked at her for a moment, then his mouth curved in what might be called a smile, except that there was no jot of mirth in it, nothing of happiness at all. “My own. The blood is my own.”
Barrick’s rage flared up again. “He’s telling a shadow-tale, Briony—I know you want to believe him, but don’t let yourself be fooled! He was with Kendrick. Our brother and two other men were killed, and the wounds were curved like his dagger, which we found covered in blood. He cannot even tell a good lie.”
Briony was silent for a moment. “Barrick’s right,” she said at last. “You ask us to believe much that seems unbelievable.”
“I ask nothing. It does not matter to me.” But even Shaso’s own hands betrayed him, Barrick thought—they sat in his lap like harmless things, but the dark fingers were working, clenching and unclenching.
“It does not matter to you that my brother is dead?” Now Briony could not keep her own voice calm. “That Kendrick has been murdered? He was good to you, Shaso.We have all been good to you.”
“Oh, yes, you have been good to me, you Eddons.” He moved a little and the chain clinked. Avin Brone stepped up beside Briony. “Your father defeated me on the battlefield and spared my life. He is a good man. And then he brought me home like a dog he had found in the road and made me into his servant. A very good man.”
“You are worse than a dog, you ungrateful creature!” shouted Barrick. This was a different Shaso, sullen and self-pitying, but still his tormentor, still the one who so many times had made him feel less than whole. “You have never been treated like a servant! He made you a lord! He gave you land, a house, a position of honor!”
“And in that way he was cruelest of all.” The frighteningly empty smile returned, a pale gash in the dark face. “As my old life slid away from me like a boat drifting from the bank, he gave me a new life, rich in wealth and honor. I could not even hate him. And later on, it is true, I myself played the slave master—I sold my own freedom. But just because of the two of us I was the worse traitor, that does not mean I have forgiven him.”
“He admits he is a traitor!” Barrick moved forward to tug at Briony’s arm, but she resisted him. “Come! He admits he hates our family. We have heard enough.” He didn’t want to be in the shadowy stronghold any longer, separated from the sun and air by yards of stone, caught in this place that stank of misery. He suddenly feared that Shaso held secrets more terrible than any blade, more devastating even than murder. He wanted the old man to stop talking.
Briony waited a moment before she spoke. “I don’t understand everything you say, but I do know that if you feel any loyalty to our family at all, even a tainted loyalty, then you must tell us the truth. If it is your blood, how did it get there?”
Shaso slowly lifted his arms. The crisscross slashes had mostly healed. “I cut myself.” “Why?”
He only shook his head.
“More likely he was wounded by the guards or Kendrick,” Barrick pointed out. “While they defended their lives.”
“Was there blood on their weapons?” his sister asked. “I cannot remember.” All this talk of blood had made Briony go quite pale. The Barrick of half a year ago, he knew, would have said something to distract her, to make it easier to discuss these dreadful things, but now he was hollowed, his insides burned black.
“Your brother had no weapon,” answered Avin Brone, “which makes his killing even more cowardly. The guards were covered all over with blood from their own wounds, so it was impossible to tell if their blades had been bloodied before they died.”
“You still have explained nothing,” Briony told the old man. “If you want us to believe that, tell us why you cut yourself. What did you and Kendrick speak of, that led to such a strange thing?”
The master of arms shook his head. “That is between me and him. It will die with me.”
“Those may not be idle words, Lord Shaso,” said Avin Brone. “As you know, we have not kept the headsman as well employed in King Olin’s day as in his father’s, but his blade is still sharp.”
The master of arms turned his red-rimmed eyes first on Barrick, then Briony. “If you want my head, then take it. I am tired of living.”
“The gods damn your stubbornness!” Briony cried. “Would you rather die than tell us what happened? What obscure point of honor have you caught on, Shaso? If there is something that will save your life, then for the sake of all the gods, tell me!”
“I have told you the truth—I did not murder your brother I would not have harmed him even if he had put his own blade to my throat, because I swore to protect your father and his household.”
“Wouldn’t have harmed him?” Barrick was feeling tired and sick again—even his anger had become only a distant storm. “Strange words— you have knocked me down and beaten me often enough. My bruises haven’t healed from the last time.”
“That was not to harm you, Prince Barrick.” The old man’s words had a sharp, cold edge. “That was an attempt to make you a man.”
Now Barrick was the one who stepped toward the master of arms, hand upraised Shaso did not move, but even before Avin Brone reached him, Barrick had stopped. He had remembered the courtiers who pelted the dancing bear with cherry-stones and crusts of bread, and how he had laughed to see the chained creature snapping at the missiles in annoyance.
“If you are the murderer of our brother,” he said, “as I think you are, then you will receive your punishment soon enough. Lord Brone is right— Southmarch still has a headsman.”
Shaso flapped his hand dismissively, His chin sank to his chest as though he was too weary to keep his head up any longer.
“That is your last word?” Briony asked. “That you did not harm Kendrick, that the blood on your knife was your own, but you won’t tell us how it happened?”
