Vash, however, was still petrified. “Golden One, I am so sorry… !”
The autarch laughed. “I was beginning to wonder whether any blood at all ran in that man’s veins, let alone the ichor of a god.” He nodded. “I would not want to spoil my long years of preparation by the use of an insufficient vessel.” He waved his hand and his slaves turned the platform around to face the distant rocks. “Oh, and see that all King Olin’s guards are replaced, then execute them. Do it in front of the other men. Make it slow, so the lesson is well-learned by their replacements.” He raised his hand and the slaves stopped moving. “There was something else ...” The autarch frowned, closing his brilliant yellow eyes to think. “Ah!” he said, opening them again. “Of course! Arrange a parley with the master of Southmarch Castle. Time is growing short.”
He wriggled his fingers and the slaves carried him away down the beach—to watch the rest of the askorabi being released into the tunnels, Vash presumed. He watched him go.
Surely even the northern king has realized by now that the Golden One cannot be resisted, thought Pinimmon Vash, as if someone had spoken to him, had questioned him, but of course he was now alone on the dock. Only a fool would do anything differently than I have done.
6. The Tree in the Crypt
“When the child returned the bandits would have killed him too, but instead the leader of the bandits made the orphaned boy his slave ...”
“You are a drunkard and a fool, Crowel.” Hendon Tolly then turned on his constable, Berkan Hood. “And you are no better!” His voice echoed through the Erivor Chapel. “I should have both your heads this very moment.”
“But, my lord, it is true!” Durstin Crowel insisted. “The Twilight People are gone! Come up onto the battlements with me and see for yourself.”
“Not even the fairies can make an entire camp of more than a thousand soldiers disappear in a night without a single sound,” Tolly snarled. “In any case, why would they retreat? They were winning! No, the Qar and their ancient bitch of a leader are planning something… and you are too stupid to see it!”
Crowel’s face turned ugly with frustration, but instead of replying he closed his mouth with an almost audible snap. Even a pig like the Baron of Graylock knew better than to trade words with Hendon Tolly when he was in a foul mood. Tinwright, who still remembered several near escapes from Crowel and his cronies, was a little disappointed by his restraint.
“Doubtless you are right, Lordship,” said Tirnan Havemore, the castellan. “And that is why we have all come to you, because we need your wisdom.”
“If you butter me any more thickly, Havemore, I shall slip out of your fingers,” Tolly said with a scowl, but the worst of his anger seemed to have passed. Tinwright, who had been unwillingly keeping company for several days with the lord protector of Southmarch, had never met anyone so mercurial of mood, laughing and jesting one moment, beating a servant almost to death a few scant instants later. He was like a weathercock that never rested, spinning always toward a new direction and new extremes. “What do you say, Hood?” Tolly asked the lord constable again, sounding almost reasonable this time. “Are they truly gone? And if you say so, pray then tell me why that should be.”
Tinwright had heard almost as many terrifying stories about the scarred, muscular Berkan Hood as about Lord Tolly himself. Since Hood had become lord constable, dozens of people heard to speak slightingly of the Tollys in any way, especially those who suggested the disappearance of Princess Briony and her brother might have something to do with Hendon and his family, had quickly disappeared themselves. Rumor said they were brought to the little fortress Berkan Hood had made for himself in the Tower of Autumn. After that, nobody heard from them again, although from time to time faceless corpses were found floating in the East Lagoon just below the tower.
“The men on the wall saw nothing last night, but they heard… noises ...” Hood began.
“What sort of noises?” demanded Tolly. His moment of composure was over already. “Singing? Whistling? Dancing the bloody hormos? And why did nobody do anything? By all the gods, have I set rabbits to guard my castle?”
As the lord protector continued to shout, an anxious Tinwright let his gaze wander around the chapel. He had never been inside it before; during the time Briony Eddon ruled it had been reserved for family rituals and worship. Hendon Tolly seemed to use it only for its privacy.
The council did not seem to enjoy their time in the chapel with the lord protector, nor did he much enjoy his time with them. When he had sent them away at last, Tolly threw himself down on the front bench, the one marked with the Eddon family crest, frowning and self-absorbed. Seeing the Wolf and Stars carved there, Tinwright felt a moment of helpless sadness. He tried not to think about the changes that had come to his life and land in only half a year, but it was hard to forget that things had once been better for him—much better.
Whatever was bothering Hendon Tolly had not departed with his counselors; he was up now and pacing. “Clearly, we are all but out of time,” he said at last, as if carrying on a conversation from only a moment earlier instead of after a long silence. “The Qar have fled because they know that the autarch is coming, so we have merely exchanged one deadly enemy for a larger and more powerful one—we have a few more nights at the most. Curse that sniveling fool, Okros!” A young page had been waiting some time in the doorway of the chapel. Tolly finally saw him. “What? Gods be blasted, what is it now?”
The young man bowed deeply. It was clear he was terrified of the lord protector. Tinwright could sympathize. “The… the queen! Queen Anissa b-begs your attendance, Lordship.”
“By the holy hands of the Three, am I never to have peace? Tell her I will come when I can!”
As the page scuttled away, Tolly pulled out one of his several knives and began carving at the stars in the Eddon family crest on the back of the bench. “Knaves and slatterns, this castle is full of nothing else—not a soul capable of pissing on a stone without me there to direct them. Now I must go and listen to that southern bitch complain.” He glowered at Tinwright as though it had been the poet’s idea. “Get up, damn you,” he said, “or I’ll take the skin from your back. Follow me.”
Tinwright had not been doing anything so foolish as sitting, of course, nor was he so foolish as to point that out.
The guards who accompanied them out of the great throne hall hemmed them tightly as they made their way across the inner keep toward the residence, and Matt Tinwright was grateful to have them. The displaced throngs who lived in makeshift shacks and tents all across the keep had a sullen regard, few of them looking at Hendon Tolly with anything like admiration, and many with outright animosity.
“Ungrateful cattle,” Tolly said, far too loud for Tinwright’s comfort. “If human meat were not banned by the gods, they might have some use, but otherwise they are only a drain on my treasury and my patience.”
Queen Anissa and her household had taken up residence in chambers that covered a great deal of the residence’s highest floor. When the maid let them in, Tinwright was astonished at the amount of room they had for themselves when people were packed into the keep down below, and even into other parts of the residence, like chickens in a coop.