heading back here. If he were not a tough old soldier and made mostly of sticks and leather, we would not have this information.” Briony drank her wine. She was pale, miserable. “This is too much What are we to think?”
“Think whatever you like, as long as you do think.” Brone grunted in discomfort as he tried to find a more comfortable position. “Please understand, I have no serious reason to doubt Chaven’s loyalty, but it is an unfortunate fact that he is one of the very few people in the castle who knows much about the Autarch. Did you know his brother was in the Autarch’s service?”
Barrick leaned forward. “Chaven’s brother? Is this true?”
“Chaven is Ulosian—you knew that, I’m sure. But you did not know that his family was one of the first to welcome the Autarch into Ulos, the first conquest of Xis in our lands of Eion.The story is that Chaven fell out with his brother and father over just that matter and fled to Hierosol, and that is why your father King Olin brought him here—because he knows many things more than just how to physick the ill, not least the gossip that his own family brought back from the Xixian court. He has never shown himself to be anything other than loyal, but as I said, from my point of view it is unfortunate that he is one of the few who knows much of the Autarch. One of the few others with any direct knowledge is locked in the stronghold even as we speak.”
“Shaso,” said Briony heavily.
“The same. He fought the Autarch and lost—well, in truth he fought against this Autarch’s father. Then, later, he fought your own father and lost. Even if Shaso were not in all likelihood your brother’s murderer, I do not know how much use his advice would be—almost anyone can advise on how to lose battles.”
“That is not fair,” Briony responded. “No one has beaten Xis—not yet. So no one can give any better advice, can they?”
“True enough. And that is why we are speaking now,just you two and I. I fear the threat from the south more than I do any fairies on our doorstep.” Brone reached into his pocket and pulled out a pile of creased papers. “You should read this. It is your fathers letter to your brother. He mentions the Autarch’s growing power.”
Briony stared at him.
“I have only just discovered it.” Brone handed her the papers. “There is a page missing. What is gone seems of little import—talk about maintaining the castle and its defenses—but I cannot be sure. Perhaps you will notice something I did not.”
“You had no right to read that!” Barrick cried. “No right! That was a private letter from our father!” The lord constable shrugged. “These days, we cannot afford privacy. I needed to see if there was anything in it that might speak of immediate danger—it has been missing for some time, after all.”
“No right,” Barrick said bitterly. Was it his imagination, or was Brone looking at him oddly? Had there been something in it that had made the Count of Landsend suspect Barrick’s secret?
Briony looked up from the letter. “You said you found it. Where? And how do you know there is a page missing?”
“The letter was in a pile of documents Nynor left for me in my workroom, but he says he knew nothing of it and I think I believe him. I believe someone crept in and slipped it among the other papers on my table, perhaps because they wanted to make it look as though Nynor or myself had taken it in the first place—perhaps even implicate us in…” He frowned. “I also read it because I wondered if it had something to do with your brother’s death, of course.”
“The missing page… ?”
He leaned over and shuffled through the pages with his thick forefinger. “There.”
“This page ends with Father talking about the fortifications of the inner keep…” Briony squinted, turning between the two pages of the letter. “And the next page he is finishing up, asking us to have all those things done. You are right, there is something missing. ‘Tell Brone to remember the drains.’ What does that mean?” “Waterways. Some of the gates on the lagoons are old. He was worried that they might be vulnerable in a siege.” “He was worrying about a siege?” Briony said. “Why?”
“Your father is a man who always wishes to be prepared. For anything.” “For some reason, I don’t believe you, Lord Brone. About that, anyway.”
“You wrong me, Highness, I assure you.” The lord constable seemed almost uninterested, too tired to fight.
Barrick, his worst alarm past, was also beginning to feel lethargic. What good all this posturing and imagining? What difference in what their imprisoned father might have written, or what it might have meant? Whoever killed Kendrick had ended the prince regent’s life in the midst of all the power of Southmarch, such as it was.
“The person who had the letter may have no connection to Prince Kendrick’s death, Highness.”
“There is another question,” Briony said. “Why return it at all? With a page missing, it is as much as proclaiming that someone else has read a letter from the king to the prince regent. Why make that known?”
Avin Brone nodded. “Just so, my lady. Now, if you will pardon me, I will ask you to take the letter with you. You may think of some suitable punishment for my reading it as well, if you choose. I am old and tired and I still must find someplace to sleep tonight—I doubt Brother Okros will let me move Rule out of my bed. If you wish to talk to me about what it says, send for me in the morning and I will come at once.” Brone swayed a little; with his great size, he looked like a mountain about to topple and Barrick could not help taking a step backward. “We are come on grave times, Highnesses. I am not the only one relying on you two, for all your youth. Please remember that, Prince Barrick and Princess Briony, and be careful of what you say and to whom.”
Courtesy was the victim of exhaustion. He let them find their own way out.
It was not proving easy to make a fire. The forest was damp and there was little deadfall. Ferras Vansen eyed the small pile of gathered wood in the center of their ring of stones and could not help a longing look at the great branches stretching overhead. They had no ax, but surely an hour’s sweaty work with their swords and he and Collum Dyer might have all the wood they wanted. But the trees seemed almost to be watching, waiting tor some such desecration he could hear whispers that seemed more than the wind
Collum was working hard at the pyramid of sticks with his flint. The noise of the steel striking echoed out through the clearing like the sound of hammers deep in the earth. Vansen couldn’t help but think of all the stories of his youth, of the Others who lurked in the shadowy woods and in caves and burrowed in the cold ground.
“Done it.” Dyer leaned forward to blow on the smoldering curls of red, puffing until pale flames grew. The mists had cleared a little around them, revealing sky beyond the distant crowns of the trees, a sprinkling of stars in a deep velvety darkness. There was no sign of the moon.
“What time of the clock is it, do you think?” Dyer asked as he sat up. The fire was burning by itself now, but it remained small and sickly, shot through with odd colors, greens and blues. “We have been here for hours and it is still evening.”
“No, it’s a bit darker.” Vansen raised his hands before the fire, it gave off only a little heat. “I can’t wait for bloody daylight.” Dyer chewed on a piece of dried meat. “I can’t wait.”
“You may not get it.” Vansen sighed and sat back. A wind he couldn’t feel made the tops of the trees wave overhead. The campfire, weak as it was, seemed a kind of a wound in the misty, twilit clearing. He couldn’t help feeling the forest wished to heal that breach, to grow back over it, swallowing the flames and the two men, scabbing the injury over with moss and damp and quiet darkness. “I do not think it is ever full daylight here.”
“The sky is above us,” said Dyer firmly, but there was a brittle sound to his voice. “That means the sun will be there when day comes, even if we can’t see it. Not all the mists in the world can change that.”
Vansen said nothing to this Collum Dyer, veteran of many campaigns, dealer and risker of death, was as frightened as a child. Vansen, an elder brother in his own family, knew you did not argue with a frightened child about small matters until the danger had passed.
“I will take first watch tonight,” he said aloud.
“We must keep calling for the others. “ Dyer rose and walked to the edge of the clearing, cupping his hands
