And now the noise really did threaten to dislodge the tiles from the ceiling and even shake the pillars that kept heaven and earth separated.
The autarch turned and said something to Vash, but it was lost in the storm of approval. He turned back and waved his hands for quiet, which came quickly.
“In our absence, the Master of the Armor, Muziren Chah, will care for you as I care for you, like a herdsman his goats, like a father his children. Obey him in all things or I will return and destroy you all.”
Wide-eyed, the assembled courtiers nodded their heads and mumbled praise and in general did their best to look as if they could not even imagine what disobedience meant; Vash, though, had to struggle to keep his face expressionless. Muziren? The autarch was leaving the simpleton Master of the Armor on the throne? Surely that was the role of Prusus, the crippled scotarch, or even of Vash himself as paramount minister—what could be the reason for such a bizarre choice? Was it merely that Muziren was no threat to take the throne? It was hard to believe Sulepis could feel that he would become so vulnerable simply by leaving the city, not with a quarter of a million men at his command and the blood of a hundred kings in his veins?
Muziren Chah took the circlet of regency from the autarch and then dropped to his knees to kiss Sulepis’ feet. The autarch dismissed the crowd. (None of them were so foolish as to move from the spots where they stood until Sulepis himself had departed.) The autarch turned to Pinimmon Vash.
“To the ships,” he said, grinning. “Blood is in the air. And other things, too.”
Vash had no idea what he meant. “But...but what of Prusus, Golden One?”
“He is going with me. Surely our beloved scotarch deserves to see a little of the world, old friend?”
“Of course, Golden One. It is just that he has never traveled before...”
“Then enough talk. I will need my most trusted minister, too. Are you ready?”
“Of course, Master of the Great Tent. Packed and ready to travel, ready to do your bidding, as always.”
“Good. We shall have a most interesting adventure.”
The autarch stepped back into his litter—now that he was dressed in the royal armor, he could not set foot outside the throne room in the normal way, and in fact could not touch ground in Xis until he reached his ship. His brawny slaves lifted him and carried him out of the room, leaving Vash to wonder why it seemed to him as though the world had suddenly spun a little way out of its accustomed orbit.
27. The Players
Fearing for the safety of his new bride Suya, Nushash took her to Moontusk, the house of his brother Xosh, a great fortress built from the ivory of the moon (which becomes a tusk each month and then falls from the sky.) But hear me! Argal, Xergal, and Efiyal learned from Shoshem the Trickster where she was, and raised a great army to come against it.
Briony wiped hard at her cheeks with the back of her hand, scrubbing away the tears.
She staggered to her feet, weak-kneed and exhausted although she hadn’t moved for a long, long time. Had it all been a dream, then—the demigoddess Lisiya, the food, the stories of the gods and their battles? Only the dream of someone lost and wandering?
But wait—Lisiya had given her something, some amulet to carry. Where was it? Briony patted at the pockets in the sleeves of her ragged clothing, the long blouse of the boy she had killed, spattered with the dried brown of his blood...
She could find no trace of any goddess-given trinket. Her heart seemed heavy and cold as a stone at the bottom of a well. She must have imagined it all.
She still had something left in her of the Briony Eddon who been a queen in all but name, however, the young woman who had woken up every morning for months with the weight of her people’s well-being pressing down on her, the Briony who had learned to trust herself in the midst of flattering counselors and scheming enemies. That Briony possessed more than a little of her family’s famously stubborn strength and was not going to give in so easily, even now. She began to retrace her own steps—although noting with another pang that hers seemed to be the only footprints—searching along the forest fringe for any trace of her hours with Lisiya, for any real evidence of what had happened.
She found the amulet at last, almost by pure chance: the white threads had caught on a hanging branch several hundred steps into the forest, where it dangled like a tiny oblong moon. Briony gently teased the bird skull free, sending a prayer of gratitude to Zoria, and then belatedly to Lisiya herself, for this proof she had not imagined it all. She held it to her nose and smelled the dried flowers whose strange, musty tang reminded her of the spice jars in the castle kitchens, then slipped it into her pocket. She would have to find a cord for it, to keep it safe.
Could it all have been
Briony had a sudden, horrifying thought: if the charm was real, then Lisiya had brought her to the edge of the forest for a reason—but Briony was no longer there.
Slipping, stumbling in the growing dark, she hurried back over the wet and uneven, leaf-slicked ground, through the skeletal trees.
She burst out of the forest into the misty emptiness of early evening on the featureless meadows, and for a moment saw nothing. Then, just before she was about to throw herself down to the damp, grassy ground to gasp some breath back into her chest, she saw a single bobbing light moving away from her into the murk to her left, a lantern on a wagon going south toward Syan and faraway Hierosol. The witch, the goddess, whatever or whoever she was, had brought Briony here for a reason after all. She hobbled after the receding light, praying that these strangers were not bandits and wondering how she would explain why she was walking alone on the empty grasslands beside the Whitewood.
The two wagons on either side of the large fire made a sort of counterfeit town: for a few moments Briony could almost feel herself back in the midst of civilization. The man talking to her was certainly civilized enough, his speech as round and precise as his appearance. She knew him slightly, although she had not realized it until he gave his name, Finn Teodoros, and she was desperately grateful that they had never met in person. He was a poet and playwright who in years past had done some work for Brone and others at court, and had once or twice written pretty speeches for Orphanstide or Perinsday ceremonies. The rest of his traveling companions were players (as far as she could tell from the things they said to each other) taking their wagons on a winter tour of the provinces and beyond. As Teodoros questioned her, some of the others at the fire listened with interest, but most seemed far more involved with eating, or drinking as much wine as possible. Among the latter was another Briony thought she had heard of, Nevin or Hewney by name, another poet and—as her ladies Rose and Moina had informed her in tones mixing horror with a possibly indecent fascination—a very bad man indeed.
“So you say your name is Timoid, young man?” Finn Teodoros nodded at her sagely. “It smacks somewhat of a straw-covered bumpkin just off the channel boat from Connord. Perhaps we should call you Tim.”
Briony, who had picked the name of the Eddon family priest, could only nod.
“Strange, though, since the channel boat does not, as far as I know, make landfall in the midst of the Whitewood. Nor do you sound Connord-fresh. You say you have been wandering here how long?”
“Days, maybe weeks, my lord.” She tried to keep her voice boyishly gruff and her words what she imagined would be peasant-simple. “I do not know for certain.” This at least was true, but she was glad her dirty face would hide the flush of her fear. “And I am not from Connord but Southmarch.” She had hoped to pass herself off as a wandering prentice, but she had expected to encounter some tradesman or merchant, not this shrewd-faced familiar of her own court.
“Do not task him so,” said the tall one named Dowan—a giant of a fellow, so big that Briony did not reach
