Shadowplay

“Gyir says no,” Barrick said slowly, and now even he sounded uneasy. “It is from fire someone has made—he says it stinks of metal and flesh.” The prince turned to look at silent Gyir, whose eyes were little more than red slits in his blank mask of a face. “He says it is the smoke of many small fires...or one very big one.”

7. Chasing the Jackals

Twilight had been jealous from the first of his brother’s gleaming songs, and when Daystar lost the depth of his music and flew away, Twilight climbed into his brother’s place among the Firstborn. He made children with both Breeze and Moisture.

From the womb of Breeze came the brothers Whitefire and Silvergleam, and Judgment their sister. From the womb of Moisture came Thunder, Ocean, and Black Earth, and though their mothers were twinned, from the very first these six children could not find harmony among themselves.

—from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

Even the weak morning light seeping in from the high, small windows was enough to tell Briony that she was not in her own paneled chamber in the royal residence. In fact, she was surrounded by white plastered walls and dark-skinned women in loose, soft dresses, all busy making beds or darning clothes, and talking in a quiet, musical language Briony could not understand. For a long moment she could only stare, dumbfounded, wondering what had happened.

The truth did not wait long, though: as she rolled over and sat up, clutching the blanket close around the flimsy nightclothes she had somehow acquired, memories began to leak back.

“Good morning, Bri-oh-nee-zisaya.” Briony turned to find a slender middle-aged woman standing beside the bed. The woman smiled, showing a flash of unusual color. “Did you sleep well?”

Of course. Shaso had brought her to this place in the back alleys of whatever this Marrinswalk town was called... Lander’s something...? They had taken refuge in the house of one of Shaso’s Tuani countrymen, and this was the goldtoothed mistress of the house.

“Yes. Yes, thank you, very well.” Suddenly she felt shy, knowing she had been lying here sleeping, perhaps snoring, while these dark, delicate women worked quietly around her. “Is...I would like to speak to Shaso.” She remembered the reverence with which the women had spoken of him, as though Princess Briony should be his servant instead of the other way around, something that irritated her more than she liked to admit. “Lord Shaso. Can you take me to him?”

“He will know you are waking and will be expecting you,” the older woman said, smiling again. Briony could count half a dozen other women in the large room, and she seemed to recall there had been even more the previous night. “Let us help you dress.”

It all went swiftly and even enjoyably, the women’s talk mostly incomprehensible, a continuous dove-soft murmur that even in the waxing morning light made Briony feel sleepy again. It was so odd, these women and their foreign rooms and ways, their foreign tongue, as if the entire house had been lifted out of the sandy streets of some distant southern city by a mischievous god or goddess and spun through the air to land here in the middle of cold, muddy, winter’s-end Eion. Somebody was definitely on the wrong continent.

The older woman, guessing correctly that Briony had forgotten her name, politely reintroduced herself as Idite.

She didn’t put Briony back into the Skimmer girl’s tattered dress, but clothed her in a beautiful billowing robe of some pale pink fabric so thin she could easily see the light through it, so thin that she had to wear an underdress of a thicker, more clinging white cloth, with sleeves long enough to reach her fingertips. The Tuani women lifted her hair up and pinned it, cooing and giggling at its yellowness, then set a circlet of pearls on her head. Idite brought Briony a mirror, a small, precious thing in the shape of a lotus leaf, so she could see the result of all their work. She found it both charming and disturbing to discover herself so transfigured by a few articles of clothing and jewelry, turned so easily into a soft, pretty creature (yes, she actually looked pretty, even she had to admit it) of the kind she suspected all the men of South-march had always hoped she would become. It was hard not to bristle a bit. But the transformation was an act of kindness, not domination, so she smiled and thanked Idite and the others, then smiled some more as they complimented her at length, haltingly in her own tongue and fluently in their own.

“Come,” the mistress of the house said at last. “Now you shall go to see the Dan-Heza and my good husband.”

Idite and one of the younger women, a shy, slender creature not much older than Briony herself, with a nervous smile so fixed that it was painful to see, led her out of the women’s quarters. The passageway turned so many times that it made the house seem even larger, but they emerged at last into what had to be the front room, although instead of looking out toward the front of the house all the furniture faced doors opening onto the rainy courtyard. Shaso stood there waiting beside three chairs, two empty, one occupied by a small, bald man in a simple white robe who looked to be a little more than Briony’s father’s age, with skin a halfshade lighter than Shaso’s. The man’s short fingers were covered with splendid, glittering rings.

“Thank you, Idite, my flower,” he said; unlike his wife’s, his words were scarcely accented. “You may go now.”

Idite and the girl made courtesies and withdrew, even as the small man lifted himself from his chair and bowed in turn to Briony. “I am Effir dan-Mozan,” he said. “Welcome to my house, Princess. You do us honor.”

Briony nodded and seated herself in the chair he indicated. “Thank you. Everyone has been very kind to me.”

Shaso cleared his throat. “I am sorry I left you so suddenly, Highness, but I had much to talk about with Effir.”

“I had no idea there were such places in Marrinswalk!” Briony could not help laughing a little at her own surprise.

“If by ‘such places’ you mean Tuani hadami—houses of our people—you will find them in quite a few places, even here in the north. Even, I think, in your own city.”

“In Southmarch? Truly?”

“Oh, yes—but this is rude, expecting a guest to make conversation when she has not even been fed. Forgive me.” He raised a little bell from the arm of his chair and rang it. The bearded man who had opened the gate the night before suddenly appeared from behind a curtained doorway. He was even younger than she had thought then, perhaps only a year or two older than Briony herself. “Tal, would you please bring food and gawa for our guests—and for me, too. I was up early this morning and I am beginning to feel the need for a little something.”

The young man bowed and went out, but not before giving Briony a long, unreadable look.

“My nephew Talibo,” explained Dan-Mozan. “A good lad, although a little too enamored of these northern towns and northern ways. Still, he is a fast learner and perhaps these new ideas he so values will bring something useful to the House of Mozan. Now, let me ask, my child, was everything to your satisfaction? Did the women verily treat you well? Lord Shaso asked that you be given every kindness—not that you would have been less than an honored guest in any case.”

“Yes, thank you, Lord Dan-Mozan. They all were very kind.”

He chuckled with pleasure. “Oh, no, Princess, I am no lord. Only a merchant. Please call me Effir, and it will be to my ears as sweet honey on the tongue. I am glad you were treated well. A guest is a holy thing.” He looked up as Talibo came back through the door leading an older man who seemed to be a servant, both of them bearing large trays. The food had obviously been prepared earlier and only waited her arrival. The youth and the older servant arranged the bowls and platters carefully on the wide, low table, putting out unleavened bread, fruit, bits of cold spicy fish, vinegar-soaked mushrooms, and other savories Briony did not recognize. Tal then poured a dark, steaming liquid from a pot into three cups. When Briony had finished filling a shallow bowl with things to eat, she followed the lead of Shaso and Effir dan-Mozan, curling her legs under her and placing the bowl on her lap. She took a careful sip of the hot liquid, expecting it to be tea, which she had learned to drink from her great-aunt Merolanna,