He thought for long moments. “There’s something in that,” he said. “I’ll think about it. And I will tell the Qar about it, too. It may change nothing.” In the dying light of evening Briony could see little of him except the hard angles of his face, and although it was her twin’s voice that spoke, she could hear that it was different, too: Barrick was no longer the beloved, infuriating, pitiable companion of her childhood, but something altogether stranger and stronger.
“And now that you’re going away, that’s the Barrick I won’t get to know,” she said, airing her thoughts aloud.
He shrugged. “The old Barrick would never have survived without you. Besides, we shared blood in the pantry, remember? Even the new Barrick can’t forget that.”
She looked up in surprise. “I had never thought to hear that again.”
“It could be that we’ll also find ways to share our thoughts that you don’t anticipate,” he said with a serious face. “We will be two monarchs. Brother and sister rulers should stay in touch.” He tapped his head. “I will give that some consideration, too.”
Tears threatened again. “Still, it’ll be years at best before we see each other again! The one thought that got me through all of this was that at the end, if we survived, we would be a family again.”
“We are family, Briony. The more I change, the more I see that which will never change in me. I was an Eddon before I was anything else.” He bent and kissed her forehead, then pulled her close. Surprised, she resisted for a moment, then wrapped her arms around him and clung. For long moments they just stood that way, two people on a green hill at the side of the Coast Road as the moon rose.
“Oh, Redling, I will miss you so!”
“I know, Briony.” A smile crept onto his face. “I mean, ‘I know, Strawhead…’ and I’ll miss you. But that means we will never be completely apart.”
Vansen found it hard to think clearly on the ride back. Just helping the Funderling Chert to get his grieving wife back into the carriage felt like helping to betray someone.
“But how can he go off on his own?” Opal kept asking. “Our boy—what will he do? Who will feed him?”
“He will manage,” Chert told her over and over, but the little man looked quite stunned himself. Vansen felt for him. He knew what it was like not to be able to mourn because others needed you. “Flint has always managed, long before we heard of any so-called god.”
“Don’t you believe him, then?” Vansen asked.
Chert scowled. “No, the wretched thing is, I do believe him… that is what is so dreadful. Even if we see the boy again, he will never be our Flint, not truly.” He nodded toward the carriage where Opal waited for him and lowered his voice. “That is what makes her so sad.”
“But your boy was always something other than what everyone thought him,” Vansen said slowly. “We none of us truly knew him.”
“And Opal knows that—she knows it better than we do.” Chert reached out a small, callused hand so that Vansen could help him up onto the carriage steps. “Don’t worry for us too much, Captain Vansen. We Funderlings are a thick-skinned race. We’ll live.”
“When you’ve had a little while to yourselves, bring whatever you need to the castle and we’ll find you a place of your own there, in the royal residence.” Vansen had spent so long without a real home that he couldn’t quite think of what ordinary folk carried around with them. “Weapons, if you have them. Keepsakes.”
Chert smiled despite the quiet noises of sorrow coming from the carriage. “Yes, my grand weapon collection, of course. To be honest, I won’t need much room for that. But Opal may have a few pans.” He nodded as he considered. “And I won’t be sad to leave my brother’s house. He’ll be around the place a great deal more now that Cinnabar has convinced the Highwardens to remove Nodule from the Magisters’ Slate for his dangerous meddling, and I’m certain he blames it all on me.” Chert’s smile became a wide grin. “Which gives me a great deal of pleasure, Captain—a great deal of pleasure.”
When Merolanna’s bewildered driver had at last been allowed to leave the crossroads and the carriage had become just another shadow ahead of them, Vansen and Briony rode back to the castle in the silent company of the royal guards.
The princess and the guard captain didn’t have much to say on the way back, either. Vansen did not entirely trust words at the best of times, and just now could not summon even one word that would make sense of what he was feeling. Briony was as remote as he had ever seen her.
This “festive” mood was only enhanced when they were greeted at the causeway by another contingent of guards, this one led by a royal messenger who bowed only long enough for his knee to brush the ground before leaping to his feet and handing Briony a sealed letter from Steffens Nynor.
“Sweet Zoria,” she said as she read it. “Or whoever it is now to whom we must turn. Mercy upon us all.”
“What?” Vansen hated the look of alarm on her face, but he hated the look of pain and exhaustion even more.
“It is Anissa, my stepmother,” Briony said, looking up at the looming castle walls. “She has fallen from her tower window—or she has jumped. She is dead.”
53. Shadowplayers
“... And the gods have given him a pair of beautiful golden arms to replace those which were burned away by the sun. Tessideme, the village where the Orphan was welcomed and celebrated, became the city of Tessis, the center and heart of our Trigonate faith on earth. The Trigonarch himself lives there today ...”
“You are lucky I didn’t have you brought to mein in shackles,” Briony told him, her fists clenched so hard her knuckles had gone white. “How dare you!”
Dawet dan-Faar raised an eyebrow. “How dare I what, Princess?”
“You know precisely what, you rogue! While I was out of the castle, you went to the Tower of Spring. Anissa fell to her death while you were with her. Do you think I’m a fool, Dawet? You as much as told me you thought she should be murdered!”
He smiled. “I believe I suggested that it would be dangerous for you to let such a woman live. I was not aware a person could be killed with words.”
“You were there! You were with her when she died—you pushed her from that window!”
Dawet cocked his head, his brown eyes as wide and innocent as a fawn’s. “What makes you say such a terrible thing, Highness?”
“You were seen going in. One of the guards had stepped away— doubtless pursuing some blind of your own—but as he came back, he saw you go inside the tower.”
He shook his head gravely. “He saw an intruder but did not say anything to him? Did not try to stop the man? Did it ever occur to you that this guard is trying to make up for his own failing, Princess?”
“He saw you! He did not interfere because he knows you are a friend of the royal family.”
“He was obviously mistaken, Princess. I was nowhere near the place. Several people will swear I was playing picket with them in a little establishment newly reopened near the West Lagoon.”
“A gambling den,” she said.
“You may call it such.” He made a little bow. “Certainly there is an element of chance involved in the pastimes pursued there ...”
“Enough! I thought you an honest man even in your most dishonest moments, Dawet. Why do you lie to me now? And why did you do what I told you I could not bear to see done? Kill that poor, stupid woman?”