Shadowplay

boy’s name, and he did so as often as possible. “Miserable. Miserable and wet.”

“Ah, well. The price we must pay for the gifts the gods grant us.”

“What gifts are those?”

“Art. Freedom. Masculine virtue. Those sorts of things.” Pleased with himself beyond any reason, the fat playwright pulled the shutter down just before she could hit him with a gob of mud.

In this most extraordinary of times, traveling with the players had begun to seem almost ordinary. It had been almost half a month since Briony had come upon them, and possibly longer—it was hard to keep track without the machineries of court etiquette to remind her of things like what day it was. Eimene, the year’s first month, had become Dimene, although it was hard to tell the difference: there had been little snow in this dark, muddy year, which was a small blessing, but the rains continued to fall and the wind continued to blow, frigid and unkind. Despite all that had happened since Orphanstide, Briony was not used to living out of doors and doubted she ever would be.

They had made their way roughly south, following the Great Kertish Road along the Silverside border, back and forth across the edge of Kertewall, stopping in every town big enough to have a place to perform and enough money in the citizen’s pockets to make it worthwhile. That said, on every stop some people paid with vegetables or other foodstuffs, and in many of the smaller villages there were no coins at all in the box at the end of the night, but a few small loaves set on Estir Makewell’s wooden trunk (which served as the company’s turnstile gate) along with enough dried peas and parsnips to provide the players with a meal of soup and bread after they had finished performing. Although the spiritual instruction of The Orphan Boy in Heaven was popular, and scenes from the Theomachy (the war of Perin and his brothers against the bad, old gods) were always a favorite, what the villagers liked best were the violent history plays, especially The Bandit-King of Torvio and Hewney’s infamous Xarpedon, where Pedder Makewell always provided such a monstrous, entertaining death for the title character. Briony, who had seen too much of the true heart’s essence of late, was still not entirely comfortable with watching Makewell or Nevin Hewney staggering about spouting pig’s blood from a hidden bladder, but the spectators could not seem to get enough of it. Although they reacted with anger and outrage over the death of a hero or an innocent, especially if it was well-staged, they yelped with glee when the wicked, horned god Zmeos was pierced with Kernios’ spear, and they laughed uproariously as Milios the Bandit-King coughed out his life after having been mauled by a bear, moaning, “What claws! What foul, treacherous claws!”

The rainswept roads of Kertewall and southern Silverside were surprisingly busy, with peddlers’ carts bumping in the rutted tracks and unbound peasants, whole families or even small companies, heading south to seek work for the coming spring. Briony, who had long since recovered from wounds and burns got in Dan-Mozan’s house, and from her worst starving days lost in the forest, was feeling stronger and healthier than she had in a long time. For one thing, the pleasure of getting up each day and putting on boy’s clothes did not dim, although she could have wished them a deal cleaner and less lousy. It was not that she loved the clothes themselves or wished to be a boy, although she had always envied her brothers their ease of movement and expression, but she mightily loved the freedom of wearing nothing more confining than a loose tunic and rough hose. She could stand, sit, bend over, and on those few occasions where she was allowed to, even ride the company’s hard-working horse without having to give thought to propriety or practicality. Why had no one back in Southmarch been able to understand that?

Thinking of the old days at Southmarch and the almost daily battle with Rose and Moina over what she should wear made her feel homesick, but although she missed the two girls very much, not to mention Merolanna, Chaven, and many others, it was as nothing compared to how she ached every time she thought of Barrick.

Had she really seen him in Idite’s looking glass, or had it just been her pained heart creating a phantom of what it wished to see? What had the demigoddess Lisiya meant when she had said, “There are stranger things afoot with you and your brother than even I can guess”? That it hadn’t just been a dream or Briony’s feverish imagination, but somehow the truth? But Briony knew she was no Onirai— the gods chose their oracles early in life. In any case, the Barrick she saw had been a prisoner—shackled and miserable. It was almost better to think she had not truly seen him, even though that vision proved him alive, than to think of him so wretched, so...alone.

That was the nub of it, of course: she and her brother were both alone, and in a way that only twins could be, who had scarcely been separated their entire lives before this, and certainly never in such fearful conditions. If it was a true vision, had he seen her too? Did he mourn for her as she did for him, or was he still such a prisoner of anger and discomfort that he spared hardly a thought for his loving sister?

And what, she suddenly thought, has happened to Ferras Vansen, charged with my brother’s safety? She had to fight through a flare of anger at the thought he had let her poor, crippled brother be captured. After all, who was to say that the guard captain had not saved Barrick from something worse? Or that he hadn’t given up his own life trying to protect the prince?

That last thought brought a shockingly powerful pang of remorse—even of fear: Vansen dead and her brother alone? She could not in that moment say which would be the worse result.

I must pray for them, she told herself. She saw Vansen in her mind’s eye, tall but not overbearing, his hair the color of a walnut husk, his face either carefully expressionless or open and wounded like that of a puzzled child’s. Who was he to stay in her thoughts so? Others far more important were also lost, like her brother and father, and Shaso and Kendrick were dead. Why should she think of Vansen? He was a guardsman, a nobody—a failure, to be absolutely fair, since he had lost half his troop or more the first time he had been given a responsibility. What female weakness or pity or even—the Three defend her from her own foolishness!—desire had made her give him a second chance, she wondered, and especially with the care of the most precious thing she could have given him to protect?

She pushed all thoughts of Vansen out of her mind, tried to concentrate on her brother, to make sense out of the mysterious mirror-vision. How had it come to her? If Lisiya was alive, was some other god watching over them too? Had Erivor, their house’s patron, granted her the vision for some reason she was too blind to understand?

Great lord of the sea, help your foolish daughter! Zoria, lend me your wisdom for a little while!

Her heart sank again to think of her brother lost in some foreign place. He had always been like a hermit crab, the claws of his anger no real threat to others at all. Only his shell protected him, because without it he was too soft to live, too frightened to keep the world at bay.

One year—they had both been, what, nine or ten?—their father had allowed the Master of Hounds to give them a puppy to be their own, a beautiful black hound. Barrick had wanted to name him Immon, but Briony had refused. She had been very religious then and had not used even the mildest curses, not even silently to herself. Barrick had always laughed at her, calling her “the Blessed Briony,” but she had been firm. They were certainly not going to name him after the powerful god of burial, the Earthfather’s gatekeeper—that would be blasphemy. She named the puppy Simargil instead, after the faithful dog of Volios (although she toyed with sacrilege herself by generally referring to him as “Simmikin”) and except for the ordinary high spirits and growling, nipping play of a young male dog he had been an exceptionally sweet animal. Briony had been as attached to him as if he had been a baby brother.

She had been shocked, then, when Barrick refused to play with him, saying that he was vicious and evil.

Being who she was, Briony would not let her brother rest until she had forced him to join her in playing with the dog— or at least being in the same room with the animal, since at first Barrick hung back in the doorway while Briony scratched Simargil’s stomach and engaged him in playful, mock-fights, the dog growling in delight and throwing himself from side to side as he struggled to catch up with Briony’s moving hand.

When she at last convinced Barrick to come forward, she quickly saw the problem. He approached the dog like someone entering a wolf’s den. Simargil was already on his guard, watching Barrick not as he had watched Briony, with the bright gaze of a friend waiting to see what new fun would come, but with the narrowed eyes of someone who expected to be cheated or worse.

“Just stroke him gently,” she said. “Reach out and scratch his head—he likes that. Don’t you, Simmikin? Don’t you, my Simmikin?”

The dog looked to Briony, white showing at the corners of his eyes as he struggled to keep watch on Barrick, too. If he had spoken to her, told her out loud that he was confused by this sudden change of mood, the animal could not have more clearly let her know what he felt.