Shadowmarch

Shaso said that neither Brone nor Gailon were to be trusted, so then which one was the betrayer, the Duke of Summerfield or the lord constable? Or was it both?

Tell him? Am I going mad? The thought was like a splash of icy water, sudden and shocking. This man may have killed my brother, whatever I wish to believe. He could be the arch-traitor himself, or in the employ of someone even more dangerous like the Autarch of Xis. It’s bad enough I have come down here by myself, without Barrick —should I treat him as though he were still a trusted family counselor?

“Briony?” Shaso’s voice was faint, but he sounded concerned.

“I must go.” She turned and walked away, tried to nod to the guard as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but by the time she reached the steps up out of the stronghold she was practically running, wanting only to get out of that deep, dark place.

* * *

Matty Tinwright woke in his little room beneath the roof of the Quiller’s Mint with a head that felt as though it were full of filthy bilgewater. Notwithstanding his two years’ residence above the tavern (and thus his presumed familiarity with the room’s confines) he managed to strike his head on a beam as he stood—lightly, only lightly, praise to Zosim, godling of both drunkards and poets (a useful coupling since one was so often the other)—and fell back on the bed, groaning.

“Brigid!” he shouted.”Damned woman, come here! My pate is broken!” But of course she had gone. His only solace was that she must be back in the inn tonight, since she was employed downstairs, and he could tax her then with her cruelty for deserting him. Perhaps it would result in a row or a show of sympathy. Either was acceptable. Poets needed excitement, the rush of feeling.

It was increasingly clear that no one was going to bring him anything. Tinwright sat up, rubbing his head and making self-pitying sounds. He emptied his bladder into the chamber pot, then staggered to the window.

If it had been earlier or later in the day, he would have dispensed with the pot as an unnecessary intermediate stage, but Fitters Row was crowded. It was caution rather than courtesy that led him to empty the pot carefully in a place where no one was walking: only last month a burly sailor had objected to being pissed on from a high window and Tinwright had barely escaped with his life.

He made his way down what seemed like an endless succession of stairs to the common room. The bench where Finn Teodoros and Hewney had kept him up past midnight with their cruel drinking game was empty now, although there were silent men sitting on a half dozen of the other benches, laborers from Tin Street drinking an early lunch. Matty Tinwright couldn’t understand how the poet-clerk and the playwright could both be twenty years his senior and yet hold so much drink, forcing him to match them to preserve honor and thus giving him this head like a broken pot in a bag. It was dreadful the way they carried on, and terrible the way they led a young man like Tinwright into bad habits.

There was no sign of Conary, the proprietor. The potboy, Gil—boy in name only, since he looked to be at least a decade older than Tinwright—sat on a stool behind the plank, guarding the barrels. He had an odd, distracted look on his face at the moment, but he was no bright spark at the best of times. He had already been at the Quiller’s Mint when Tinwright had first arrived, and in all that time had never said anything remotely interesting.

“Ale,” the poet demanded. “I must have ale quickly. My stomach is like a storm at sea—only the sunshine that is pent in the brewer’s hop can quiet this tempest.” He leaned on the counter, belched sourly. “Do you hear? Thunder!”

Gil did not smile, although he was usually polite enough about Tinwright s jokes in his quiet way. After a little more fumbling than usual, he slid a tankard across the plank. The potboy was blinking like an owl in daylight and seemed even more befuddled than usual; Tinwright was delighted to notice that he did not demand payment. Conary no longer gave his lodger even a sniff without coin in hand, and was threatening to evict him from the tiny closet-room at one edge of the top floor as well. Unwilling to risk losing this windfall, Tinwright was preparing to retreat with the tankard to his room before the potboy realized what he had done, and was heartbroken to hear Gil say, “You are a poet… ?”

It was too far to the stairs to pretend he had not heard. He turned, an excuse ready on his lips. “I mean, you can write, can’t you?” the thin-faced man asked him. “You have a good hand?”

Tinwright scowled. “Like an angel using his own quill to dip ink. A great lady once told me that my ode to her would be just as beautiful and useful -were the words to be assembled in a completely different order.”

“I wish you to help me write a letter. Will you do that?” Gil saw Tinwright’s hesitation. “I will pay you money. Would this be enough?” He extended his hand. Nestled in the palm like a droplet of raw sunshine was a gold dolphin. Tinwright gaped and almost dropped his tankard. He had always imagined Gil to be a little simpleminded, with his staring and his silences, but this was idiocy like a gift from the gods. Zosim had heard a simple poet’s prayers, it seemed, and they had reached the god on a generous morning.

“Of course,” he said briskly. “I would be happy to help you. I will take that…” he plucked the coin out of the potboy’s hand, “and you will come up to my room when Conary has come back.” He drained the tankard in a long, greedy swallow and handed it to Gil. “Here—I will save you having to carry it down later.”

Gil nodded, his face still as expressionless as a fish lying in a dockside stall. Tinwright hurried up the stairs, half certain that when he reached his room beneath the sloping ceiling the dolphin would be gone, vanished like a fairy-gift, but when he opened his fist it was still there. For the first time a suspicion flared within him and he bit at the coin, but it had the soft solidity of the true stuff. Not that Tinwright had found many chances to bite on gold during his twenty years of life.

Gil stood just inside the door with his arms at his sides.

He truly is more strange than usual, Tinwright thought, but it’s brought me nothing but good. He couldn’t help wondering if Gil had any other little tasks that might need Matty Tinwright’s help—-mending his shirt, perhaps, or helping him off with his boots. If he has more dolphins, I’ll be proud to call him employer, be he ever so stupid. A thought came to him for the first time. But where would a potboy come by gold like this? Killed someone? Well, let us just hope it was somebody who won’t be missed…

At last, Gil spoke. “I want to send a letter. Write the words I say. Make them proper if they need changing.”

“Of course, my good fellow.” Tinwright took up his writing board, one of the few things left he had not been forced to pawn, and sharpened the quill with an old knife stolen from Conary’s kitchen. With this gold, he realized, I will be able to get my bone-handled penknife back. Hah! I will be able to buy one with an ivory handle! “I do not know greetings such as would go on a letter. You write them.” “Splendid. And who is the letter for?”

“Prince Barrick and Princess Briony.”

Tinwright dropped his quill. “What? The prince and princess?”

“Yes.” Gil looked at him with his head tilted to one side, more the expression of a dog or a bird than a person. “Can you not write this?”

“Of course,” Matty Tinwright said hurriedly. “Without doubt. As long as it is nothing treasonous.” But he was worried. Perhaps he had been too quick to give thanks to Zosim, who after all was a very capricious sort of godling.

“Good.You are kind,Tinwright. I write to tell them important matters. Write this, the things I will say.” He took a breath. His eyes were almost closed, as though he were remembering rather than inventing. “Tell the prince and princess of Southmarch that I must speak to them. That I can tell them important things that are true.”

Tinwright breathed a sigh of relief as he began an elaborate greeting, since it was clear the letter would be nothing but the self-important ram-blings of an unlettered peasant that the royal twins would doubtless never even see— ”To the noble and most honorable Barrick and Briony,” he wrote, “Prince and Princess Regent of Southmarch, from their humble servant…” But what is your name? Your full name?”

“Gil.”

“Have you no other name? As mine is not just Matthias, but Matthias Tinwright?”

The potboy looked at the poet with such incomprehension that Tinwright could only shrug. “… From their humble servant, Gil,” he wrote. “Potboy at the inn known