Briony loosened and retied the strip of cloth meant to keep the sweat out of her eyes. The mere thought of being ruled by the fairy queen, the creature who had stolen her brother, filled her with fury. “I don’t care. I will not turn the guns on my own people unless they have taken up arms for Tolly. But from the distance a cannon shot will travel, that’s impossible to know.”
Lord Helkis, the prince’s friend and chief commander, cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, Princess Briony, but this is no ordinary siege. We cannot wait them out. From what we are told, Tolly has been stocking the residence with supplies for months. Do you think we can make them surrender by wagging our fingers at them?”
“Miron,” said Eneas warningly.
“No, Your Highness, it must be said.” The young nobleman turned to Briony again. “I will speak what my liege cannot, either because of his feelings or his courtesy. If the fairies are right, Princess, then you will doom your own people by this faintheartedness.”
“Miron! You go too far… !”
“No, Eneas.” Briony lifted her hand. “He is giving you what any good councillor should—the truth as he sees it.” She turned to Helkis. “Yes, my lord, it is a dilemma. But I will not let anyone fire willy-nilly into the heart of my castle. Tolly has gathered many of my subjects around him. Even among the soldiers, a large number of those fighting probably believe they are defending the keep against the autarch or the fairies or some other foreign invader. No, I will not return to my home and spill any blood that I needn’t spill.” She frowned at a sudden thought. How many times had her father said, “Even a good king will always have blood on his hands ...”? More than she could count. Briony had thought he meant simply that wars could not be avoided, but now she was learning the truth: Olin had been saying that almost every decision a monarch made would cause suffering for someone. “Please, let me consider this problem for a short time, if you would be so good,” she said when Lord Helkis would have spoken again.
“Would you like a moment to yourself?” asked Eneas.
“That is exactly what I would like, Your Highness,” she said gratefully. “But I will not evict you from your own rooms. I will walk a little.”
“But not beyond the yard of this house… !”
“Of course not, Prince Eneas. You have my promise.”
She made her way downstairs past the sentries and other soldiers, bemused as always not by the way they evaporated from in front of her— Briony had been born into a royal family; she was used to deference—as by the way they steadfastly avoided meeting her eyes. This was a new thing. Only the most fearful or guilty had looked away from her before, and ever since she had reached womanhood, she had become used to men sizing her up with the unconscious insolence of horse-traders. So what had changed?
These are Eneas’ men, she realized. And they think I belong to their prince.
It was a realization that disturbed her more than it should have.
She reached the ground floor and made her way across the crowded courtyard to the gate. The merchant who owned this house had been a wealthy man—Briony believed she had met him at a few court functions, although she didn’t remember his face—and his property was large, more than adequate for Eneas and his command staff. She made her way up the stairs of the small gatehouse.
It was beyond strange seeing what had become of the outer keep in her absence, horrifying as any nightmare. The Qar’s brief invasion had all but emptied it, and though a few residents had filtered back out after the fairies had withdrawn, they had quickly found themselves under fire from the autarch’s huge cannons and so had fled back to the inner keep again.
The outer keep had once been as pretty and thriving a city as any north of Tessis, but now it seemed lifeless as a pile of charred bones. Entire buildings had toppled into spars and brickwork or burned away until only their chimneys remained, solitary as grave markers. Scarcely any of the tallest buildings still stood, and those that remained upright were blackened and deserted. Briony could not look at the wreckage without her eyes filling with tears.
But that will do you no good, woman, she told herself. Keep your thoughts on what you need to do. Concentrate!
The problem was clear. From here on White Bank Road, she could not see much of the old walls of the inner keep, although she could see the towers of Raven’s Gate clearly enough and the shapes of soldiers atop it, scurrying like ants on a garden wall. But the inner keep’s walls were high and nowhere could they be quickly breached. Whether traitor or not, Avin Brone had always been a useful tyrant about keeping them in good condition and the gates and guard towers well staffed.
Briony couldn’t help but wonder where Brone was at that moment, and what he would do if he knew she lived. How deep did his treachery run? Had he made common cause with Tolly, or would he at least support her to get the castle back into Eddon hands? That was something to think about, if they managed to breach the walls of the inner keep: Brone didn’t know that Finn Teodoros had spilled his secrets. He didn’t know that Briony knew all about him.
But it did her no good now unless she could get word to Brone on the other side of the walls and he really would support her. After all, he might just as easily lead her and Eneas into a trap. Might Tolly have some kind of hold over him? It was so hard to know, because Brone himself was so full of shadow. “He is the man who does what I cannot,” her father had sometimes said, but never told her or her brothers exactly what he meant. Now Briony Eddon was beginning to suspect.
Thinking of Brone and his countless subterfuges reminded her of something—a night long ago, or so it seemed now, after Kendrick’s death but before everything had gone completely wrong, when he had summoned Briony and her brother to his chambers. It had been the same night Finn Teodoros had read Brone’s plans to have her family imprisoned and destroyed, but that was not what had sparked in her memory.
Father’s letter… ! A page of that letter had been stolen, and that night Brone had given it back to them, saying he found it among his own papers and claiming his innocence. Briony doubted that innocence now, but it was the letter itself she remembered. It had said something about protecting the drains of the inner keep because Olin feared vulnerability there. Could that help her now?
Her heart fell as she remembered that Brone had resolved the problem the king feared, covering the drains with massive iron grates whose holes were too small for even the slenderest child or slipperiest Skimmer to pass through. In fact, the Skimmers themselves had sworn to her only hours earlier that there was no way they could enter the inner keep. Her beloved father had unwittingly made certain her only chance at rescuing his throne was prevented.
Another idea came to her then—an odd idea, the sort of thing that would have Eneas frowning and doubtful, but thinking about the Skimmer-folk had brought it to her and the more she considered it the more it seemed her only chance.
She turned her back on the gate so suddenly that she bumped into one of the Syannese knights, who dropped to a knee, full of apologies. “None of that,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Sir Stephanas, Your Highness.” Like the others, he wouldn’t look directly at her. It irritated her.
“Well, go find me half a dozen of your brave fellows and tell them all to put on ordinary clothes—the deserted houses must be full of them. Then meet me here in an hour’s time.”