Tears filled Briony’s eyes; she blinked, then wiped them away. Saqri’s voice grew quieter now, almost kind. “I cannot say I feel sorry for you—not after what your family has done to mine—but I do know something of loss, and I also know something of confusion. For a long time I did not know whether to hate or forget. I have come now to believe hate is useless ... but so is forgetting. Those who forget too easily are the toys of fate.”
Briony’s tears threatened to overspill again. “But what should I do?” she asked, and was not even certain to whom she spoke.
“Live, Briony Eddon,” the fairy queen told her. “Live and remember. Remember and learn.”
The dark-haired girl was running from him now. No matter how he tried to call out to her, to calm her, she wouldn’t stop, as if he himself had become the thing she feared. He didn’t immediately know where they were—at first he was not certain it was a place—but as he pursued her, he began to recognize the walls and stone floors of Southmarch.
He was in the Portrait Hall now, in front of the picture of Queen Sanasu that had so often caught his attention. Now, as he looked into his ancestor’s dark eyes, he saw for the first time that her expression was not the distant, superior thing he had always thought, but a combination of many things—loss, fear, anger, and perhaps a little hope; even stranger, though, the portrait was moving, rippling as though something behind it was struggling to emerge.
He stretched out his hands toward the red-haired queen and began to scrape away what lay on the surface. It was not a picture at all, he realized—it was dirt, only dirt, but the more he scraped, the more dirt he found. He could still feel the movement just below his hands, so he doubled his effort, digging faster and faster until his fingers curled around something small and hard and cool to the touch. He pulled it out of the clinging earth and found he was holding a stone statue of the dark-haired girl, her face frozen in a look of terror. But even as he stared at it, the statue fell apart into a clump of shiny beetles that tumbled from his hands and began to crawl and fly away like a handful of spilled jewels. He cried out and tried to catch them, but within moments they had all vanished into the earth once more.
“Time grows short, Eneas Karallios,” the queen of the fairies said. The light of the burning ships made the shadows of those gathered jump and caper like demons. “Have you come to a decision?”
“Please, do not trust them so easily, Eneas!” Briony pleaded.
“I am sorry, Princess,” he said. “Truly sorry, you must believe me, but I must consider the safety of my own men first and, ultimately, my own country. That means I must also trust my own instincts, and those tell me that the fairy folk are right ...” He raised his voice. “We will do as you say, Queen Saqri.”
“Good. Then we have done all we can do here,” Saqri said. “The rest of the southerners are scattered through the hills. They will not come back soon.”
Briony did not trust herself to speak. They were going to leave her father’s fate to the fairies. For a moment she entertained several wild schemes of how she could search for him by herself, but Briony knew she couldn’t leave Eneas and his Syannese soldiers to free her home without her. Dull resignation set in.
“But when they see how small our numbers are, the Xixies now hiding in the hills will come back,” Eneas said to Saqri. “What then?”
“You will be across the water and beyond their reach,” the queen assured him. “Our allies will see to that ...”
“Allies?” Eneas asked. “What allies are those ...?”
Briony would have sooner blinded herself than let the Qar woman see her fighting back tears of anger, but as she turned to leave this foolish, misbegotten council behind, she was distracted by a tall figure staggering up the beach from the Qar’s tiny settlement of tents, headed toward the bonfire. At first she thought from its stiff-legged movements that it must be one of the Qar, but as it came closer she saw that, other than the odd, hobbling gait, the slender figure looked quite human. Its hair seemed to have the reddish color of the fire itself.
How strange, she thought—so much like Barrick’s ...
She stood, thunderstruck, as her brother limped past her and made his way toward the fairy queen. Barrick wore loose-fitting clothes, shirt and breeches of white cloth only a little darker than his skin, which seemed paler than she remembered, and he was a full head taller than Barrick had been the last time she saw him. Still, there could be no doubt it was her brother.
“Saqri!” he cried as he reached the queen, “Saqri, I understand now!” He noticed the others staring at him, although he had not yet seen Briony, and made a gesture she did not recognize. “Pardon.” He turned back to the queen. “Qinnitan! The girl named Qinnitan—she is here! She is here, and I think she must be under the castle! I forgot her for the longest time—but how could that be? How could I forget someone so important?”
Saqri did not have a chance to respond before Briony pushed through the strange creatures ranged on the Qar side of the fire and stepped in front of him. “Barrick? Is that really you?” But it was—there could be no mistake. She threw herself at him, arms wide. “Barrick!”
To her astonishment, he did not respond at all; it was as though she embraced a stone oracle in a temple. “Who is this?” he asked, stepping back and pushing her arms away.
She stared at him in amazement. It was without doubt the face she had looked into like a mirror all her life—her brother, her twin. “Barrick, it’s me, Briony! Your sister! Don’t you recognize me?” She was stunned. Had she changed so much?
And then something came into his eyes ... but it was not what she had expected, not at all. She saw a gleam of memory, but also mistrust and even irritation. “Ah. Of course—Briony. And have you been well, sister? It has been a very long time.”
“Well?” She stepped back as though he had slapped her. “Barrick Eddon, what’s happened to you? Why do you treat me this way? I have feared for you and suffered for your sake every day since we were separated. Do you tell me you have not thought of me at all?”
Instead of answering, he turned to the queen of the Fay with a helpless look on his face, as though asking for aid.
“Much has happened since you saw each other last,” Saqri said. “Doubtless, you will find much to talk to your sister about when all this is over, Barrick Eddon. But now our time is short.”
Barrick nodded as though that summed everything up perfectly. “I wish you well, Briony,” he said, then nodded in Eneas’ direction as well. “And of course our other mortal allies, too. Saqri, I must speak to you when you return. I can feel Qinnitan’s presence. She is here—I’m certain the autarch has her.” He paused as if he might say more, then turned and limped back down the beach toward the Qar camp.
Briony stared after him, aching inside as though she had swallowed a handful of freezing stones. Within a few moments her brother had vanished into the dark once more.