instead of his twin. “I was reading. Does that meet with your approval, Your Highness?” She flushed a little. “I only wondered…”
“I have been meaning to ask you, Princess,” the lord constable asked, “whether my niece Rose Trelling was giving you good service.” He did not meet her eye. Brone’s look was distracted, almost confused, as though they had woken him up rather than the other way around. “We were very grateful for your kindness to her. She is a good girl, if a little silly sometimes.”
“I am very happy with Rose.” Briony stared at him. “But I cannot believe you woke us after the midnight bell to ask whether my ladies-in-waiting are serving me well.”
“Forgive me, Highness, but I am waiting our true business until…” The lord constable fell silent, nodding significantly as the page returned with three flagons of wine. The boy knelt by the fire and heated them one by one with a poker, then served Briony first. It was clear Avin Brone wouldn’t speak until the boy had left, so they all sat and watched the seemingly endless process, the room silent but for the quiet rumble and crackle of the fire.
When the boy was gone, Brone leaned forward. “Again, I apologize for calling you both here, out of your beds. The fact is, it is easier for me to empty my rooms of listening ears and less conspicuous to do so. If I had come to you and asked for all your pages and maids and guards to be sent away, it would be the talk of the castle tomorrow.”
“And you do not think anybody will know or discuss the fact that Barrick and I came across the castle to your rooms?”
“It will not occasion as much speculation. And there is another reason to meet here, which you will see.”
“But why this alarm?” Barrick couldn’t lose the twist of fear in his guts. Was this what being a king was always like? Fearful midnight summonses? Distrust and doubt all the time? Who would want such a thing? He had a sudden horror—he prayed it was only a horror and not some kind of premonition—of Briony lost or dead and himself left alone to rule. “What is so urgent?” he almost shouted. “What cannot wait for morning and needs to be held secret?”
“Two things, two pieces of information, both of which reached me this evening,” said Brone. “One of them will require you to get up, so I will begin with the other while you finish your wine.” He took a long swallow from his own flagon. “Thank Erilo for the blessed grape,” he said fervently. “If I could not have a cup or two of warm wine at night so I can bend my old legs, I would have to sleep standing up like a horse.”
“Talk,” said Barrick through clenched teeth.
“Your pardon, Highness.” Brone tugged at his gray-shot beard. “Here are the first tidings, whatever they may mean. Gailon Tolly seems to have disappeared.”
Avin Brone nodded. “Yes, my prince. He never reached Summerfield Court.”
“But he left here with a dozen armed men,” Briony said. “Surely, so many knights can’t simply vanish. And we would have heard something from his mother, wouldn’t we?”
“That’s right,” said Barrick. “If anything had happened to Gailon that old cow would be at our gate by now, screaming murder.”
Lord constable raised his broad hands in a gesture of helplessness. “They have only just begun to realize at Summerfield Court that he is missing. He sent word by a fast courier when he left here, and they expected him back a week ago, but no one was surprised he hadn’t arrived— I imagine they thought he had stopped for some hunting, or to visit one of his . . his cousins.” He looked at Briony, then quickly away. “It was only the day before yesterday that people began to grow alarmed. A horse that belonged to his friend, Evon Kinnay, son of the Baron of Longhowe—you remember young Kinnay, of course . . ?”
“A weasel,” snapped Barrick. “Always going on about how he wanted to become a priest, and touching up the servant girls.”
“. . Kinnay’s horse, still with saddle and saddle blanket, was found wandering a few miles from the grounds of Summerfield Court. Gailon had mentioned in his letter to his mother that Kinnay was one of the men coming back with him. The Tollys have now searched the area all around the forest. No trace.”
Briony put down her wine cup. She looked now like Barrick had felt since he first received Brone’s summons. “May the gods preserve us from evil. Do you think it is something like what happened with that merchant caravan? Could it be… the Twilight People?”
“But Summerfield Court is miles and miles south of the Shadowline,” Barrick hurriedly pointed out. He didn’t like the thought of dark things slipping past that barrier and roaming the lands of men. He hadn’t had even a single good night since the news of the caravan. “We are much closer than they are.”
“Nothing is impossible,” admitted Avin Brone. “I want you also to consider the possibility of something closer to home. Gailon Tolly left Southmarch a very angry man—a very powerful man, too, especially now that your brother Kendrick is dead. I do not have to tell you that there are many people of influence in the land who think you two are too young to rule. Some even say that you are my puppets.”
“Perhaps you should consider that the next time you make us walk across the castle to your chamber in the middle of the night, Brone.” Anger helped Barrick feel a little better—it was like dipping the hot poker into the wine, sharing the heat.
“What does it matter what people think?” his sister demanded. “We did nothing to Gailon! I was glad to see the back of him.”
“But think on this,” said the lord constable. “Imagine that Gailon appears again some days from now. Imagine that the Tollys cry that you sent soldiers after him to kill him, that you feared his claim on the throne…”
“What nonsense! Claim? Gailon has a claim only if our father and all of his family are dead!” Barrick’s anger returned, so strong that he had to get up and pace. “That means Briony and I would have to be dead, too. And our stepmother’s child as well.
Brone held up a hand, requesting quiet. Barrick stopped talking but could not make himself sit down again. “I only ask you to imagine a possibility, Highnesses. Imagine if Gailon were to reappear in a few weeks and say you tried to murder him—perhaps claim that the two of you were going to avoid paying your father’s ransom so you could continue to rule and that he had objected, or something like that.”
“That would be treachery—revolution!” Barrick slumped down in his chair again, feeling suddenly weak and miserable. “But how could we prove it wasn’t so?'
“That is the problem with rumors,” said Avin Brone. “It is very hard to prove that things are
“But why do you propose such an unlikely possibility?” asked Briony. “I don’t much like Gailon, but, surely, even if the Tollys had designs on the throne, he would wait until there is some problem—a bad crop, or a plague of fevers much worse than the one that Barrick and others have had—wait until people are truly frightened before trying to turn them against us? They hardly know my brother and me. We have reigned only scarcely a season.”
“Which is exactly why they might believe lies spread about you,” said Brone.
Briony frowned. “But even so, aren’t you stretching for an answer? If Gailon is truly lost and not just hunting, as people thought, there are a dozen explanations more likely than him preparing to accuse us of trying to harm him.”
“Perhaps.” The big man stood slowly, putting his hand on the seat of the stool to steady himself. He picked up an oil lamp and the room’s shadows writhed. “But now we come to the next part of my concern. Will you come with me?”
They followed him out of the sitting room and down a narrow, unornamented hallway Brone paused outside a door. “This is why I am not in my own bed tonight, Highnesses.” He pushed the door open.
The room was lit by many lamps and candles—far more than would seem normal in a bedchamber. At first, even with all this light, Barrick had trouble making sense of the knot of shapes at the center of the bed: only after a few moments had passed could he see that it was one man kneeling atop the bed next to another, the kneeling one with his head pressed against the other’s chest in a pose almost like a lover’s embrace. The one on top held a finger against his lips, asking for silence. His lined face was familiar to Barrick, something he thought he had seen in one of the nightmares, and he had to suppress a gasp of fear.
