“He is gone, Princess. Even the oldest and wisest of our race who survived cannot tell for certain what that means. He is an immortal and immortals are, by definition, hard to kill, but it might be possible when they take mortal form. We can feel no trace of him in the waters that roil now beneath us—the inrushing sea quenched his blaze. Where is fire when it ceases to burn? That is where Zosim is.”
“So you are telling me he… it… cannot come back? That we are safe?”
Aesi’uah’s expression was strange—almost a smile. “None who draw breath are safe, Highness.”
Briony checked her temper. It took a moment to answer. “Thank you for this report, Lady Aesi’uah. Have you anything more to tell me?”
“Nothing except that we regret the damage done to your people as well as ours.”
“But it was you fairies who did much of that damage… !” said one of the nobles and the undercurrent of discontent threatened to break the surface and become a true wave.
“Murderers,” called another, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Demons!”
Briony was angry at this, but she knew that many of her own people supported her only because of her family name, and others solely because of the prince of Syan and his soldiers. She could not afford to give her impatience full rein.
“Please,” she said, holding up her hand to still the growing clamor. “Lady Aesi’uah is our guest. Whatever happened before, in the end the Qar fought as our allies and many of them died defending this city and stronghold. Do not forget that.” She turned to the eremite. “But as you can see, our folk are not quite ready to extend the open hand of forgiveness—and who can blame them?”
Aesi’uah inclined her head. “As you say, who can blame them?”
It seemed to Briony there was a mocking undercurrent to the reply, and that decided her. She did not like smugness coming from these creatures, however justified. “Since we still have much to discuss,” she announced, “and my brother will not come to me, then I will go to him.”
She was satisfied to see something like surprise on the eremite’s slender face. “Highness… ?”
“My apologies—was I not clear? I will go to speak to your Barrick, lord of fog and wind or whatever his grand new title is.”
“But, Your Highness, it is… he is surrounded by ...” Aesi’uah was clearly at a loss.
“He is what? He is my brother, yes. He is on the sovereign territory of Southmarch, capital of these March Kingdoms. He is surrounded by fairy folk, whom you have just promised me regret any damage they have done to my people. So why should there be any difficulties?”
Eneas was startled, too. “Briony… Princess… I don’t think this is wise.”
“But I do, Prince Eneas. More, I think it a grave necessity. The people with whom we were recently at war are encamped beneath our feet, within a short distance of miles of tunnels we know almost nothing about. If we are finding it difficult to root out a simple annoyance like Crowel, can you imagine what a hornet’s nest it would be to try to do the same with the Qar should things go badly between us?” She turned and saw, as she had hoped, that all eyes in the capacious tent were on her. “Of course I shall go.” She raised her hand to forestall the prince’s next words. “Alone but for a few guards—this is a parley between allies, after all. Lady Aesi’uah? You may go and inform Barrick that I will come to him today, before sunset.”
Briony sat back in her makeshift throne as the eremite rose and made her graceful, unhurried way out of the tent. Her head was still throbbing but she felt a little better. At least she would finally have a chance to see her brother, face-to-face.
Tinwright crouched in the indifferent shade of a dying yew tree in the commons before the royal residence and watched Princess Briony march past with her retinue of guards. A group of nearby laborers also saw her and raised a ragged cheer. Tinwright hoped she hadn’t noticed him. Only Elan M’Cory swearing to the princess that Tinwright had resisted Tolly long after others would simply have murdered Briony’s infant brother had kept Tinwright from going back to a stronghold cell—or more likely to the headsman’s block.
But was it really true, he wondered—what would he have done if things had been different? Would he have thrown away his own life, or would he have done what Tolly ordered?
Matty Tinwright had just finished his jug of wine and all he could think of now was that he wished he had been able to afford more. Prices were very high, and all the best things went to the Syannese soldiers—as it was, Tinwright had needed to steal coppers out of his mother’s jewelry box so that he could get drunk and quiet the pain in his chest, which hurt every time he took a deep breath. Still, he supposed he should be grateful he was alive. If he had not had the Zorian prayer book in his breast pocket he would be having this drink in Heaven—or at least not in Southmarch.
“Who would ever think a book could save a man’s life?” the Syannese soldier-surgeon who bandaged his wound had said. Tinwright had been in chains at the time so he had not agreed with the man about his luck. He was free now but didn’t feel much better about things.
And there went the princess, he thought, less than a hundred paces away from where he sat, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. He could only watch as she and the soldiers made their way along the commons path toward the Raven’s Gate—watch and wonder how things had gone so very wrong for Matt Tinwright, Royal Poet.
Elan M’Cory did not love him. She had made that plain. She had thanked him for helping to keep her alive and hidden from Hendon Tolly, but that, she had told him, was gratitude, not love.
“Duke Gailon needs me,” she had said, pointing again at the hideous thing she had spent the last three days nursing. “He nearly died—he thought he was dead! How could I desert him now?”
Even had Tinwright not resented the man for the fortunate accident of his birth, he would have found it painful to have her prefer such a blighted creature to his relatively unblemished self. Gailon Tolly’s face was a mass of open wounds and pocked with dirt and worse things beneath the skin, so that he seemed ravaged by plague. Still, Elan had told him that she wanted only to devote the rest of her life to nursing Gailon back to health. What could be clearer than that? Tinwright himself was of no further interest.
Love, he thought. Subject of so many sweet verses, and yet it stinks like ordure.
He levered himself to his feet and staggered across the green, which now was little more than mud and broken bits of rubble pierced by a few strands of dried, dead grass.
A map of my heart, Tinwright thought.
Would I have done it? Would I have killed the child to save myself—no, to save Elan? It was hard to say now—hard to remember anything except the confusion and terror of that moment. He stared down from wall the and across the outer battlements to the unending roll and crash of the sea. The looming Tower of Summer covered him in cool shadow. Tinwright’s own thoughts on that night were as lost to him as something from the depths of history. How could anyone ever say with certainty what such and such a hero said, or thought, or felt? Tinwright had been in the middle of great events… although he had to admit his part had been a minor one… and could scarcely remember a moment of it except for Hendon Tolly’s mad face glaring like a festival mask. Like something from a play…
He looked up at the sound of footsteps. A slender figure was coming toward him along the top of the wall, an old woman by her face, although she walked with strength and ease. Tinwright realized he was staring and looked out over the water again. The waves, whipped by early summer winds, spat froth as they raced toward the castle wall.