Shadowplay

the bay. Olin and the twins are gone and their throne is in terrible danger —the Eddons are your own kin, remember, however distant.”

“You don’t need to tell me that I have failed my family and my king, woman,” Brone growled. “That is the song I sing myself to sleep with every night.” He didn’t seem anywhere near as bleary as he had only a short time ago.

“Then listen now. The Tollys have their hands around the throat of the kingdom. And somehow—somehow, though I don’t pretend to understand it—my child is involved. Our child.”

“I cannot believe you told Barrick and Briony.” She scowled. “I am not a fool. I said the father was dead.”

He looked at her and his face softened. “Merolanna, I did my best. I never turned my back on you.”

“Too little and too late, always.” “I offered to marry you. I begged you...!”

“After your own wife was dead. By then I had grown quite used to widowhood, thank you. Twenty years after I was foolish enough to fall in love with you. Too late, Avin, too late.”

“You were the wife of the king’s brother. What was I to do, demand he give you a bill of divorce?”

“And I was older than you, too. But I recall that neither of those things stopped you when you wanted my favors.” She paused, took a ragged breath. “Enough of this. It is also too late for fighting this way. We are old, Brone, and we have made terrible mistakes. Let us do what we can now to repair some of them, because the stakes are bigger than our own happiness.”

“What do you want me to do, Merolanna? You see me— old, sick, cut off from power. What do you want me to do?”

“Find Chaven. Find this moon-stone. And help me to cross the bay so I can meet these fairy folk and ask them what they did with my son.”

“Do you mean it? You are mad. But mad or not, I can’t help you.”

She dragged herself to her feet. “You coward! Everything you worked for your entire life is being stolen by the Tollys, and you sit there, doing nothing...!” She leaned across the table and raised her hand as though she would strike him. Brone reached up and caught at it, folding his immense paw around hers.

“Calm yourself, Merolanna,” he said. “You do not know as much as you think you do. Do you know what happened to Nynor?”

“Yes, of course! They pushed him out so they could give his honors and duties to your lickspittle factor, Havemore! Nynor’s gone back to his house in the country.”

“No, curse it, he’s dead. Hendon’s men killed him and threw his body in the ocean.”

For a moment the duchess faltered and if Brone had not been holding her hand, she might have fallen. She pulled away and sat down. “Nynor is dead?” she said at last. “Steffens Nynor?”

“Murdered, yes. He was talking against the Tollys and he spoke to someone he shouldn’t have. Word got back to Hendon. Berkan Hood dragged Nynor out of his bed in the middle of the night and murdered him.” Brone clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. “I heard it myself from someone who was there. They cut that good old man into pieces and smuggled his body out of the castle in a grain barrel. They can’t quite get away yet with slaughtering their enemies without even a mock trial. Not quite.”

“Oh, by all the gods, is that true? Killed him?” Merolanna abruptly began to cry. “Poor Steffens! The Tollys are demons—we are surrounded by demons!” She made the sign of the Three, then wiped at her face with her sleeve and tried to compose herself. “But that is all the more reason you must help me, Avin! There are things going on that...”

“No.” He shook his head again. “There are certainly things going on, and you don’t know all of them, Merolanna.” He looked around again. The guards were still not back, but he dropped his voice even lower. “Please, understand me, Your Grace—I have worked hard to convince Hendon and his party that I am no threat so I could put plans of my own into motion. I cannot afford for them to suspect otherwise. I will do what I can to find Chaven, because that would not seem unusual—the physician and I knew each other well. But I can do nothing else. I will not risk the small chance we have of saving Olin’s throne. Everything is balanced on a knife-edge.”

The duchess stared at him for a long time. “So that is your defense, is it?” She smiled a little, but her words had a bitter edge. “That you are already hard at work on other, more important things? Well and good. But I will discover this moon-piece myself if I must, and find out what happened to my child—our child—even if I have to pull this castle down stone by stone to do it.”

“You are no spy, Merolanna,” Brone told her gently.

“No. But I am a mother.” She reached a trembling hand up to touch her face. “Sweet Zoria, I must be a terrible mess. You’ve made me cry, Brone. I’ll have to repair myself before I go talk to Utta.” She gazed around the cluttered room, slowly and wearily now, energy mostly spent. “Look at this. We sit at the center of the capital of all the March Kingdoms but you do not even have a glass for an old woman to fix her face. How can it be so hard to find a simple mirror?”

Part Three MACHINES

25. The Gray Man

The Firstborn were as large as mountains and as small as gems in the private earth. They came from all parts, choosing to side with either the children of Moisture or the children of Breeze, because the wounds would not close themselves and in the rising storm the only songs that could be heard were of blood and answers. Thus came the War in Heaven.

The children of Moisture first drew a ring around the house of Silvergleam, which had as many rooms as the number of times the People have drawn breath.

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

He hit me.

Barrick’s anger had shrunk to a cold, hard thing inside his chest but it was not going away. He was glad: it gave him life, of a sort—better angry than empty. He stared at Ferras Vansen, who was chewing a piece of stale bread. The rest of the prisoners, quickly sorted into winners and losers after the goblin guards had thrown the bowl of slops into the middle of the cell, were nursing either their meals or their wounds. Some of the smaller ones were so thin and undernourished that it was clear they had given up competing for food and were just waiting to die. But Barrick did not care about such hapless creatures.

He had no right!

Stop. Gyir pushed Barrick’s hand with the heel of bread in it. Eat. He brought you food.

But he hit me!

I would have hit you myself if I had been closer. You were acting like a nestling—no, not even that. No child of the People would be so foolish. This is a dangerous place— how dangerous we do not even know yet. There is no time to waste on such tricks. A percussive thump jarred the floor of the cell like a giant hammer falling in the depths of the earth below them. Barrick had heard the thunderous noise, like a cannon firing, many times since being captured; the other prisoners did not even look up.

Gyir pulled a chunk from his own loaf, one of the largest pieces any of the prisoners had secured, and slipped the rest into his cloak. What you don’t eat, save. We may need it later.