Chert was suddenly distracted. “Princess? Don’t you see them?”
“See what? See whom?”
“Down there.” But where he pointed, Briony could see nothing—it was too far and too dark. “None of them are moving,” he said, “but there are four of them lying in the bottom of the boat.”
“What do you mean?” She could not see in this dim light like a Funderling, and certainly could not see a boat, but as she stared, she saw a green gleam far down in the watery depths, growing as it rose toward the surface. For a moment, as if in a dream, she saw an impossible thing—a gigantic, glowing human shape struggling up through the fathoms of roiling water, thrashing toward the surface. Then it slowed to a drift. The light dimmed and nearly died, and the vast, manlike shape fell into dark, flickering pieces. A moment later the water was completely dark once more. It had been a dream, a vision, nothing more. Briony shook her head in confusion. “Do you still see the boat? Are there truly people in it?”
“Yes. Perhaps if I can get down to them with my rope, they can answer some of your questions. If they’re still alive, of course.”
“I think it unlikely.” Briony stared down at the boat she could not see. What had happened here? More importantly, what had happened far below? To her family? To the autarch? The unsettled water still roiled and made waves along the edge of the chasm. How could any of them have survived? “Merciful Zoria, does anyone but us still live?”
But Chert had already gone looking for a place to anchor his climbing-rope.
Chert seemed unusually grim as he came back up the treacherous slope after tying a rope to one of the survivors, and he would not answer Briony’s questions as they hauled up the first of the boat’s passengers, a slender young girl with the dark skin and dark eyes of a southerner, her body cold and motionless. By the time they had untied her, the first of the Syannese troops began to appear on the path. Eneas had sent them, they told Briony, and the prince himself was close behind. With their help, the second victim came up much more quickly, and even before he had been unharnessed, she realized she was looking at her father’s body.
As she lay weeping on Olin’s cold chest, the guards drew up the last two from the boat. Her brother Barrick was laid out beside her father, then as she stared down at his pale, still features in growing horror, the last of the survivors was brought up. He struggled out of his own harness and walked unsteadily toward her, then fell to his knees, swaying like a tree that had been cut mostly through.
“At your command, Princess, I bring your brother back to you. I believe… I believe he yet lives ...”
Then Ferras Vansen’s eyes turned up and he fell senseless before her.
Part Four
THE PINE TREE
45. Only in Dreams
“For three days and three nights Adis went up and down across Kerniou singing the story of his sad life, and at last the goddess Mesiya, wife of Kernios, let drop a tear of pity. Kernios was so angry that he banished her forever…”
She was so tired, so tired. All she wanted to do was sleep until the world was different—but that was very clearly not to be…
“And the Xixian enemy, Highness?”
Briony nodded. “The city is safe. Captain Vansen says they are scattered through the hills, Lord M’Ardall.”
“But there are still many of them… thousands!”
She did her best to keep her voice measured. The young earl was one of the few who had resisted Hendon Tolly’s rule. She would need men like him. “They have shown no sign of wanting to continue their autarch’s lawless attack on Southmarch, and our soldiers are busy subduing the last of the traitor Tolly’s men inside the walls.” She did her best to smile. “I promise you, good M’Ardall, we are watching all our enemies. Let’s not borrow trouble until we have a better chance of paying it back.”
He bowed. “I hear your wisdom, Highness.”
The Throne hall was in ruins, so the seat of power was now a quartet of dining hall benches set in a tent in the middle of the residence’s front garden until the residence itself was sufficiently repaired. At the insistence of Prince Eneas of Syan, Briony alone had been given a chair, both to make sure she held pride of place in the makeshift throne room and to alleviate the misery of having to wear a dress and stays again. She hated it, but it was a sacrifice she would make to show her people that things had gone back to the way they were—even those things she had loathed.
If only my head didn’t feel like an anvil, she thought. If only their voices did not feel so much like hammers, beating on it…
As she looked at the faces around her, many of them as familiar as members of her own family, she could not help a moment’s pang at the strangeness of her situation: though a few still survived, not a single person around her now was an Eddon. Anissa had taken baby Alessandros and retreated to her old haunts in the damaged Tower of Spring. Her great-aunt Merolanna was in ill health and kept to her rooms. Briony’s father lay in state in the one remaining public hall of the residence, his bier surrounded by candles. Briony had wept over him many times. And her brother…
Ah, Barrick, where are you… ?
“Princess? I am sorry, should I come back some other time?”
She opened her eyes to see Hierarch Sisel doing his best to look patient. If nothing else, having Hendon Tolly as a master had made the hierarch and other members of the aristocracy more cautious about angering their ruler.
So I suppose that’s one I owe you, dead man. “No, Eminence, no,” she said out loud. “It is my fault, not yours. Please, ask me again.”
“It is just that we cannot put off your father’s funeral much longer and there is much to decide. The Eddon family chapel is ruined, and the great temple in the outer keep has been badly damaged as well. ...”
“Then we shall have his rites beneath the sky, Eminence. I think he would have preferred it that way.”
“I will arrange it, Princess,” Eneas said, heading off any objections from Sisel. “If you will permit me, of course.”
She nodded. “That is kind of you, Prince Eneas.” But his willingness to help troubled her, too. She could not lean on him too much: she still owed him an answer. “Now, what else? I find myself muddleheaded, and I fear I am not the best judge of things this moment. Nynor? It is good to see you back, my lord. What do you wish to say?”
The old man had been struggling to rise, but let her wave him back into his seat. “How could I stay away when my lady needed me? And your father was one of my dearest friends, a gem among princes, an example to ordinary men ...”
Briony was trying to hide her impatience. Didn’t people understand there was no time now for such formalities and pretty words? Things had to be done. The March Kingdoms, especially Southmarch itself, were in a shambles. Bodies still lay in the ruins as well as in the caves and tunnels beneath the castle, and they were starting to stink. The living needed to be fed, and Tolly had emptied the treasury. Briony doubted he could have spent everything—more likely he had shipped gold and jewelry back to his family home in Summerfield, so on top of everything else she had to contemplate waging war on her relatives to retrieve her own exchequer.
Nynor was still enumerating the ways in which the current state of finances—and in fact the entire day-to-day administration of Southmarch—was a disaster unseen since the days of the Great Death: “… And who will stand witness against the malefactors?” he complained, wagging a knobby finger. “It is virtually impossible to know for certain which of the people supported Tolly and which stayed loyal ...”