“We’ve moved on to the royal stores long ago,” she said. “You should sit down again, man, before you fall and hurt yourself.”
“I… I wanted to talk to you, Princess Briony. To thank you for making me your poet.”
She smiled. “You are welcome.”
“I have a question.” He licked his lips, clearly uneasy. “Do you remember that… that I was writing a poem about you? How you were like Zoria?”
She nodded, although the memory was very vague indeed. It hadn’t been very good was all she could recall. “Of course, Master Tinwright.”
He smiled in relief. “Well, I was thinking I might go back to it… but I was thinking. That’s what I was doing—thinking about the poem. I was thinking that I couldn’t make a poem about you that didn’t have anything about… about, you know, the things that happened. Here and while you were in Syan. I’ve been asking people. Trying to find out the truth.”
“I’ll be happy to answer your questions, Matt,” she said kindly. “But not tonight. Tonight is for merriment.”
“I know!” He waved his hands as though accused of theft. “But I was thinking and thinking about how the whole thing has been like… well, like one of Finn’s or Nevin’s plays from the very first.”
“I’m not certain I understand.” She looked over to Vansen and Teodoros, still talking like fast friends—or maybe Finn just fancied her guard captain. She could hardly blame him. “Like a play?”
“All of it. Like a puppet play. Someone was always behind everything we saw. From what I’m told ...” he screwed up his face, trying hard to get it right, “from what I’m told, Zosim was behind it all, pretending to be Kernios. But Hendon Tolly thought it was someone else, a goddess—he sometimes seemed to think it was Zoria herself! But it was all Zosim wearing disguises, do you see? Just like a player!”
“I suppose ...”
“All of it like a play. You were a princess, but you disguised yourself, just as in so many stories. The villain of the piece hid in the shadows and had others do his bidding, like that southern king, that autarch. That’s just like one of Hewney’s plays, too. But what really made me stop and wonder was when I thought, ‘but if Zosim was behind it all, but he was beaten in the end ... who did that?’”
Briony, a little the worse for wear herself after several cups of Perikal, could only shake her head. “Who did what?”
“Beat Zosim. Tricked him and defeated him.”
“Well, the boy Flint, that I told you about earlier… he claims that part of Crooked lives inside him. ...”
“Exactly!” said Tinwright loudly, then blushed. “Yes, Highness. And when you told me that, I really got to thinking. You know the stories from the old days about how Kupilas beat Kernios and Zosim both, right here!” He frowned. “I mean, down underneath the earth. You know, don’t you?”
“I have heard many stories in the last year. But yes, I know about what Kupilas was supposed to have done to Kernios and Zosim and the rest.”
“But who else was there all the time? Who else was present when that all happened?”
Briony was beginning to wonder if it might be time to end the festivities. “I don’t know, Master Tinwright. Whom?”
He smiled in pink-cheeked triumph. “Zoria was—Zoria, the Dawnflower. She was there. Kernios killed her for betraying him—or at least that’s what the stories say. But what if she didn’t die, like Zosim didn’t die? What if she stayed alive in those… whatever places?”
She looked at him and realized that he was not quite as drunk as he looked. “It’s… it’s a fascinating idea, Master Tinwright ...”
“It was your Zorian prayer book that saved me from your archer, you know.” He said the words very carefully, then smiled when he had successfully navigated the sentence. “It was over my heart and stopped the bolt. Zoria’s hand. Your prayer book. Do you see?”
Briony didn’t know what to say. “I suppose ...”
“Very well. One last question, Princess. I heard you’re building a shrine to the forest goddess Lisiya. Can I ask you why?”
“Demigoddess. Because… because I promised if I survived that I would build one for her. I would rather not say anything more about it. Why do you ask?”
He nodded. “Can I show you something I found in a book?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin volume, then fumbled it open. “It’s written by Phayallos. He wrote a lot about the gods ...” Tinwright squinted as he turned pages. “Ah, here it is.” He cleared his throat. “… And these goddesses and demigoddesses, especially Lisiya of the Silver Glade and her sisters, were commonly called the Handmaidens of Zoria, and strove to see that the Dawnflower’s wishes were carried out in the world, that Zoria’s worshipers were rewarded and her foes were thwarted.” He closed it, spoiling his moment of triumph a bit by dropping the book on the floor.
“Master Matty is drunk!” laughed Finn Teodoros. “Time to take him home.”
As Finn and Matt Tinwright helped Hewney onto his feet, Briony could not help asking the young poet, “And will you continue with your poem?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, his eyes shining. “I have so many ideas—it will be the best thing I ever did! I was miserable because… because of a woman… but now I know why. I was meant to do this!”
He was still burbling as Vansen helped the three of them out the door. “Help them down the stairs!” Vansen shouted to a page. “We do not want the princess’ guests breaking their necks. And tell the coachman to take them back to their inn.”
“Oh, gods,” groaned Hewney, waking up. “Not the Quiller’s Mint! I’d rather sleep in the gutter.”
Ferras Vansen came back in a little unsteadily and threw his arms around Briony. She kissed him, but she was preoccupied and he could tell.
“What were you talking with that fool of a poet about?”
“The gods,” she said. “And whether or not earthly life is only a sort of play.”
“I’m glad I missed it, then,” he said. “I never had the wit for such things. Now come to bed, my beautiful Briony, and let me love you a while before we both have to get into costume and go back to playing our own parts once more.”
54. Evergreen
... And that is the end of my tale, which is meant both to instruct and to please His Highness, and all other young people who shall read the Orphan’s story.”
The morning dawned bright and much hotter than the day before. Barrick could smell the sap beginning to move in the pines and firs, the slow sweetness that ran through their veins as the Fireflower did in his. The Qar had traveled through the night, but slowly; now that Saqri had died, there was no need to go faster than what the many wounded could comfortably manage.
Duke Kaske of the Unforgiven brought the reports from the scouts: the road ahead was all but empty for several leagues. “But after that there are several mortal villages, and then a walled city with towers,” Kaske said. His almond-shaped eyes were drawn up ever so slightly at their outer edges, which Barrick knew meant that the corpse-pale fairy was fighting with strong emotions. “We did not pass this way when Yasammez led us. We have not come against it before.”
Barrick nodded. He leaned down to pat the neck of his horse, then drew back on the reins so that the black charger pulled up with anxious, skittering feet; even the horses didn’t like this place and longed for the dark meadows of home. “Stop here,” he called out, then repeated it again without spoken words. The procession behind him slowed and began to split into smaller pieces, horses and other steeds taken down the small slope to water, some of the Changing tribe joining them in four-footed form, which made the other animals restive. “Don’t worry, Kaske, we’ll go around it. There is no dishonor in that.”