“It is a handsome thing, is it not?” Hendon Tolly held it up so Matt Tinwright could see it; but in fact Tinwright could see almost nothing else: the blade was so close and its presence so alarming that his eyes nearly crossed. The knife was as long as Tinwright’s forearm and palm, its slender jade handle inlaid with unfamiliar golden symbols, as was the even slenderer blade. “It is Yisti work, I was told, from the southern part of Xand,” Tolly said. “A ghostmaker, it is called. We will see if it is also a godmaker.” He laughed, but it seemed perfunctory. Tolly was pale and sweating, as if, despite his usual air of confidence, the events of the last few days had shaken him very deeply. “Just think, poet! A thousand years or more it lay in a Hierosoline tomb, and you will be the first to wield it again in all that time. That is something worth making a rhyme about!”
The knife was so close that Matt Tinwright was beginning to think Hendon Tolly might be about to test it on him, despite his promises. Tinwright looked to the soldiers, three hardened men in Summerfield colors, Tolly’s handpicked guards, but they would not even meet his eye. The protector’s madness was as clear as a large livid bruise on pale skin. No one wanted to endanger himself by catching Tolly’s attention.
“What do you w-want me to do… ?” Tinwright didn’t even want to touch the knife. The green handle and the tomb-patina made it look envenomed.
“Follow me, of course.” Tolly lowered the knife and pointed to the steps leading down into the Eddon family vault. The sun was well behind the hills now and the opening seemed a gateway to the void itself, the naked emptiness that came before the gods. “We have work to do, fool, and midnight is only hours away. If we are to beat that brown dog Sulepis to the prize, we cannot wait any longer.” He turned to one of the guards. “When Buckle arrives, send him down to me at once.”
The guard nodded. Tolly turned back to Matt Tinwright. “Come, now. Bring the child. Haste!”
His stomach roiling so he feared he might vomit, his head full of confused and fearful thoughts, Tinwright wrapped the blankets a little tighter around the squirming royal heir and followed Hendon Tolly down into the tomb.
Tolly led them to the old vault, which lay behind the first outermost chamber where Okros Dioketian had died and Tinwright himself had been caught by a returning Hendon Tolly. The old vault was larger and higher than the front chamber, a hollow, six-sided mountain of stone, each of the six walls honeycombed with niches, and each niche holding its own stone or lead box. Most of the old coffins bore no images of the dead, and few even had inscriptions; those who slumbered inside, many of them kings and queens of Southmarch, had now become nameless and faceless.
“No one has been buried in this room for hundreds of years,” Tolly said, walking slowly around the hexagonal chamber with his hands behind his back like an idler out for a stroll. “Kellick built the outer chamber, it is said, which means that great Anglin himself must be here, crumbling in one of these hidey-holes.” He looked up to see whether he had shocked Tinwright with his blasphemy. “But nobody knows which!” Tolly laughed. “No matter how famous in life, when you are dead, you are nameless clay!” The baby in Tinwright’s arms was beginning to cry steadily now, the hitching sobs becoming a single wail. “By Perin’s beard, poet, will you give that cursed child a shake?” Tolly said, frowning. “Make it be quiet.”
Matt Tinwright held the small creature gingerly. What did someone like him know about comforting an infant? “Does he have to be here, Lord?”
“What are you babbling about? Of course he has to be here—we cannot perform the ritual without him! Might as well try to have a dinner with no roast!” Tolly closed his eyes as if he could bear no more, but he kept them closed for longer than Tinwright would have expected, and when he opened them, they had a perilous cast. “I said, silence that child.”
Tinwright could think of nothing else to do except to give the tiny creature his finger to suck. It was a trick he had seen Brigid use on her sister’s child to quiet it. Little Alessandros continued to hitch and sob for a while even with the finger in his mouth, but gradually grew silent.
Tolly thrust out his hand, and one of the guards handed over a sack he had been carrying. “Where is that other fool? He should have been here by now.”
“My lord… ?”
“Shut your mouth, poet, I am not talking to you. Well?”
The guard who had handed him the sack squirmed beneath his master’s bright, disturbing glare. “Buckle? I’m sure he’ll be here right quickly, Lord Tolly. ...”
Tolly silenced him with a mere movement of his hand. “Enough. Go and wait outside for him, both of you. I would talk with Master Tinwright.”
The guards, only too willing to leave the Old Vault, hustled away. Tinwright heard their footsteps going up from the new vault to the surface. When they died away he became uncomfortably aware that he was trapped far beneath the ground—in a tomb, no less!—with a dangerous madman.
“It’s almost time,” Hendon Tolly said after some moments had passed. “Did you hear the bell as we came down? That would have been ten of the clock. The Syannese must have taken the residence by now—much good it will do them!” The lord protector laughed. Of late he had stopped trimming his beard and paying close attention to his clothing. Now, ragged and almost untended, Hendon Tolly no longer looked like the mirror of Tessian court fashion. “They will strut and imagine themselves as conquerors, just as that Xixian dog beneath our feet dreams himself to be the chosen of the gods—but they will both be wrong! Because I will beat them to the post. The goddess’ favor will be mine!”
Tinwright could no longer keep track of what his fearsome master planned to achieve with his dreadful sacrifice. Sometimes he talked as though the goddess Zoria would serve him personally, other times as though he himself would become a god. Tinwright might have marked it all as the ravings of one moonstruck, but he had felt the cruel power that lurked in Tolly’s mirror, had felt it stalking him like a hungry wolf. He didn’t want to feel it again and he certainly did not want to hurt a child, royal or not. But what else could he do? Run? Even if he got away from Tolly, the sentries were just outside.
Better to let Tolly kill him, perhaps. If they fought, at least his death might be swift. He could go to the gods with the knowledge that he had refused to do an inexcusable thing.
He squeezed the baby tightly against him, which made the infant burst out crying again.
“My lord,” Tinwright began, “I can’t… I won’t ...” but even as the words came out of his mouth—and admittedly, they were not loud to begin with—Hendon Tolly silenced him with an imperious hand.
“Quiet. Do you hear that?” He cocked his head. “There. That fool Buckle has finally arrived. You will enjoy this, poet. A little surprise planned just for you.”
“F-For me… ?” But now he could hear it, too, a commotion in the other vault, the sound of people moving, of boots on stone and a woman’s voice, protesting, pleading…
Oh, gods, has the monster brought Queen Anissa to watch what happens to her child? Was there no limit to Tolly’s depravity?
The soldiers dragged the struggling woman into the room. When he saw who it was, Tinwright’s knees almost buckled beneath him.
“Ah, and here is that last member of our convocation,” said Tolly cheerfully. “Lady Elan, how I have missed you. You were a cruel, fickle girl to let me think you had run away.”