She gave him a look that should have told him she wasn’t interested, but he was either too stupid or too frightened to understand. She sighed. “Who? Who would want to speak with me that I would also want to hear?”
Panic crept over his face as he tried to make sense of this.
“Oh, for the love of Zoria, just tell me what it is, soldier. Who wants me?”
“The merchant, Highness. Dard, the merchant.”
It took her a moment to remember who that was. “Ah. And how is it that you are carrying messages for a prisoner? For a servant of the autarch, no less?”
He swallowed again, hard. “Servant of ...?”
“How is it that you come bearing his messages? Did he slip you a coin?” She raised her eyebrow. “Ah. He did, didn’t he? I can’t imagine Eneas will think much of that.”
The boy’s eyes bulged with alarm. “My father’s dead,” he began, almost stuttering in his hurry to explain, “and my sister can’t be married without…”
She sheathed the blade she had been polishing and lifted her hand. “Enough. I do not much care, to tell the truth. Keep your coin and lead me to him.”
When the little merchant saw the tall soldier approaching the stockade with a companion, he walked away from the other prisoners and then made his way to the fence with the casual air of a man in no hurry.
“All right, soldier, you can go on your way,” Briony said. “Just tell me your name.”
“M-my n-n-name?” The stutter was quite serious now.
“I’ll keep silent about you taking money from a prisoner, but I may need a favor from you in return some day. What’s your name?”
“A-Avros. They call me ‘Little Avros.’ ” He shrugged. “Because I’m tall.”
“I see. Go on, then.”
The soldier was long gone by the time Dard reached the fence. Briony pulled out her smaller knife and began to clean her fingernails. “You bribed a soldier,” she said. “The prince won’t like that.”
“Surely you won’t tell,” Dard replied. “That poor lad, with his ugly sister trying to raise a dowry ...”
“Enough. What do you want?”
“I recognized you.”
Briony raised her eyes to look at him for a flat moment, then returned to examining her nails. “Everyone in this camp knows who I am. Did you waste my time just for that?”
“No, Princess, truly I didn’t. I want to bargain with you.”
“Bargain?” She looked from side to side. “Eneas now owns everything you had, merchant. What could you possibly have to bargain with? Especially with me?”
“Information.” He smiled. He did not have all his teeth, but those he had were very white and shiny. She was not impressed. “I know something that I think you would like to know.”
“And why should I not have Prince Eneas squeeze it from you like water from a cleaning rag?”
Dard was not intimidated. “Because you might not want him to know about it. But if you want me to tell him first, of course, I will ...”
She took a moment to finish cleaning under the nail of her smallest finger, then slipped the knife back in its hidden sheath. “And what do you want in return for this information, merchant?”
“Freedom. I can make back the money I lost on this venture in half a year—but not if I am a prisoner. Eneas can put the mercenaries to work, but he has no need for me and my colleagues. I was only trying to make a living, not take sides in a war.” He shrugged. “And I do not think this will be a safe place to be for very long.”
Briony considered the man. What could he know that she would not want to share with Eneas? The fact that she could not think of anything did not make her feel more secure. “But even if I wished to make such a bargain, I have no power to do so. The prince of Syan is the master here.”
“Can you not… persuade him?” White teeth or no, his leer was disgusting.
Briony turned and walked away.
“Wait! Wait, my lady, I am sorry! I mistook the situation! Please, come back!” She turned and looked at him. Dard the Jar had sunk to his knees and now let his desperation show: “Please, Princess, I was a fool—forgive me. Just give me your word that you will do your best to honor our bargain and I will trust you. Will you do that? If my information helps you, promise you will speak to Eneas about my release and I will be satisfied. Your word is good enough for me.”
She was half-frightened, half-curious to hear what he considered information good enough to bargain with a princess. “Very well,” she finally said. “I promise that, if what you say is useful, I will speak with Eneas on your behalf.”
“Soon. Before there is any more fighting.”
“Soon, yes. Now, what is this news of yours?”
He looked from side to side, although there was not another soul within several dozen paces, then leaned close to the stockade fence. Briony moved as close as she could while staying out of the merchant’s reach—she was not going to be tricked into being anyone’s hostage.
“On the other side of the hills,” he said, “on the shore of Brenn’s Bay, lies the autarch’s camp.”
“I know that, merchant ...”
“But what you don’t know is that he has a prisoner—a royal prisoner.” Watching her face, he must have felt he had guessed right, because his expression became more confident. “Ah, I see you did not know. That prisoner is your father, Princess Briony—the autarch has your father, King Olin of Southmarch.”
12. Willow
“They traveled to Perikal and Ulos and even savage Akaris, where they saw Xandian wind-priests in the marketplace and heard the whine of their pagan song, but the Orphan stopped his ears and eyes against such godless hymns ...”
Sometimes it seemed that the guns would never stop again. After days of a curious, unexpected peace, the Xixian attack had finally begun and had not stopped since. The southern ships slipped up and down Brenn’s Bay, their cannons blasting the tops of the city walls and smashing rooftops and spires into a deadly rain of whirling rubble that killed people from above as suddenly as Perin’s lightning. Much of the roof of Wolfstooth Spire, the city’s tallest tower, was already gone. Larger Xixian guns hammered away at the outer wall all day long from their emplacement on the hill behind mainland Southmarch, and once or twice every hour the autarch’s mightiest cannons, the Crocodiles, roared their terrible roars. The Crocodiles fired cannonballs so big it took dozens of men just to lift one, carved boulders which could punch holes in even the thickest ramparts with just a couple of landed shots. Southmarch’s defenders had to rebuild the most critical parts of the great outer wall every night, gangs of men working feverishly in near-darkness before the autarch’s cannons came back to fiery life in the morning and began the assault all over again.
It was obvious even to Sister Utta, who knew very little of war, that the castle could not resist the assault for very long—hundreds of Southmarch folk had already died, and many hundreds more lay wounded. Already Xixian soldiers in conical helmets were running boldly at the base of the walls, shrieking up at the defenders like mad things, daring them to waste precious arrows and rifle-balls. At some point there would be too few hands available to rebuild the broken sections of wall and the autarch’s soldiers would come pouring through. Utta knew she would have to make a final decision on whether to let herself be taken or to violate the Zorian order’s prohibition against suicide—she certainly did not expect to be treated as gently by the Xixian soldiers as she had been by the Qar.