Autarch…”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Brone is a troublemaker. If there is no intrigue, no mysterious plots to protect us from, he has no influence.” Barrick scarcely untied his chest padding before yanking it off, peevish as a child sent away from the supper table.
“Are you saying we have nothing to worry about? When our brother was murdered under our own roof… ?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying! Don’t twist my words! I said that I don’t trust Avin Brone to tell us any truth that doesn’t do himself benefit. Don’t forget, he’s the one who convinced our father to marry Anissa. Nynor and Aunt Merolanna argued against it, but Brone would not let go until he convinced Father to do it.”
She frowned. “We were so young—I scarcely remember it.”
“I do. I remember it all. It’s his fault we’re saddled with that madwoman.”
“Madwoman?” Briony didn’t like the look on her twin’s face—an edge of savagery she was not used to seeing. “Barrick, I don’t like her either, but that is a cruel thing to say and it’s not true.”
“Really? Selia says she is acting very strangely. That she allows no one to visit her except women from the countryside. Selia says that she has heard several of them have the name of witches in the city…” “Selia? I didn’t know you had seen her again.”
His high color, which had begun to subside, suddenly came flooding back. “What if I have? It is any business of yours?”
“No, Barrick, it isn’t. But aren’t there other girls more worthy of your interest? We know nothing about her.” He snorted. “You sound just like Auntie Merolanna.”
“Rose and Moina both admire you.”
“That’s a lie. Rose calls me Prince Never-Happy, says that I always complain.You told me.” He scowled.
She kept her face sober, although for the first time since the conversation began she was tempted to smile. “That was a year ago, silly. She doesn’t say it anymore. In fact, she was very worried about you when you were ill. And Moina… well, I think she fancies you.”
For a moment something like honest wonder came over his face, coupled with a look of yearning so powerful Briony was almost shocked. But an instant later it was gone, and he had put on the mask she knew far too well.
“Oh, no, it’s not enough for you that you’re the princess regent. You act like you wish you were the queen— like I wasn’t even around to interfere with things. Now you want to tell me who I can and can’t talk to, and maybe even set one of your ladies on me to pretend she likes me so that she can keep an eye on me. But you can’t, Briony.” He turned, dropping the rest of his practice gear, and walked out of the armory. Two of the guards who had been standing discreetly along the back wall followed him out.
“That’s not true!” she called. “Oh, Barrick, that’s not true… !” But he was already gone.
She didn’t really know why she had come. She felt as though she were walking through a high wind and trying to hold together some fantastically complex and delicate thing, like one of Chaven’s scientific instruments but a hundred times larger and more fragile. There were moments when it seemed to her that the entire family was under a curse.
The heavyset guard would not open the door to the cell. She argued, but even though she was the princess regent and could do what she liked, it was clear that if she insisted on her sovereignty the guard would go straight to Avin Brone and she didn’t want the lord constable to know she had come. She didn’t really understand this herself, and couldn’t imagine trying to explain to the dour and practical Brone.
In the end she stood at the cell door’s barred window and called him. At first there was no reply. She called again and heard a stirring, a dull clink of iron chains.
“Briony?” His voice had only a shadow of its old strength. She leaned forward, trying to see him in the shadows of the far wall. “What do you want?”
“To talk.” The stink of the place was terrible. “To… ask you a question.”
Shaso rose, the darkness moving upon itself as though the shadows had by magic taken human form. He walked forward slowly, dragging behind him the chain that bound his ankles, and stopped a little way from the door. There was no light in his stronghold cell: only the torch that burned on the wall behind her illumined his face, but it was enough for her to see how thin he had become, the shoulders still wide but the long neck almost fragile now. When he twisted his head so that he could better see her—she must be only a silhouette in front of the torch, she realized—she could make out the shape of his skull beneath the skm. “Merciful Zoria,” she murmured.
“What do you want?”
“Why won’t you tell me what happened?” She fought to keep her voice even. It was bad enough to weep in the privacy of her chamber. She would not cry in front of this stern old man or the guard who stood only a few yards away, pretending not to listen. “That night? I want to believe you.”
“You must find it lonely.”
“I am not the only one. Dawet does not believe you would kill Kendrick.” For long moments he did not answer. “You spoke to him? About me?”
Briony couldn’t tell if he was stunned or enraged. “He was the envoy of our father’s kidnapper. He was also someone who might have been the murderer. We spoke many times.”
“You say ‘was.’ ”
“He’s gone. Back to Hierosol, back to his master, Drakava. But he told me that he thought you were too honorable to have broken your oath to the Eddon family, no matter what the appearance.”
“He is a liar and a murderer, of course .” The words came cold and heavy. “You can trust nothing he says.”
She was righting a losing battle to keep anger out of her own voice. “Even when he proclaims a belief in your innocence?”
“If my innocence hinges on that man’s word, then I deserve to go to the headsman.”
She struck the door so hard with the flat of her hand that the guard jumped in surprise and took a few hurried steps toward her. She angrily waved him away. “Curse you, Shaso dan-Heza, and curse your stiff neck! Do you
Again Shaso fell silent, his great head sagging to his chest. He did not speak for so long that Briony began to wonder if, worn down by the rigors of confinement, he had somehow fallen asleep standing up, or had even died on his feet as the poems claimed the great knight Silas of Perikal did, refusing to fall even with a dozen arrows in his body.
“I can tell you nothing about that night except that I did not kill Kendrick,” Shaso said at last. His voice was weirdly ragged, as though he fought back tears, but Briony knew there was nothing in the world more unlikely. “So I must die. If you truly do wish me any kindness, Princess— Briony—then you will not come to see me again. It is too painful.”
“Shaso, what… ?”
“Please. If you indeed are the single lonely creature in this land who thinks I have not betrayed my oath, then I will tell you three more things. Do not trust Avin Brone—he is a meddler and there is no cause as dear to him as his own. And do not trust Chaven, the court physician. He has many secrets and not all of them are harmless.”
“Chaven… ? But why him—what has he… ?”
“Please.” Shaso lifted his head. His eyes were fierce. “Just listen. I can give you no proof of any of these things, but… but I would not see you harmed, Briony. Nor your brother, for all he has tried my patience. And I would not see your father’s kingdom stolen from him.”
She was more than a little stunned. “You said… three things.”
“Do not trust your cousin, Gailon Tolly.” He groaned. It was a sudden, weird, and terrible sound. “No. That is all I can say.”
“Gailon.” She hesitated—almost she wanted to tell him the news of Gailon’s disappearance, and more important, of Brone’s assertion that the Tollys had hosted agents of the Autarch, but she was suddenly confused.
