“No.” She shook her head firmly. “That will do no good. I’m not going to fight my way in, Eneas. There are thousands of Xixian soldiers there, but there are also hundreds of local people, Marchlanders, who go in and out of the camp peddling food and drink and trinkets to the autarch’s men. And there are other women visiting the camp. I think we all know what they are selling.”
Eneas was staring at her with eyes wide. “Are you saying you will masquerade as a… as a woman… one of those…”
“As a whore?” She laughed. “Blessed Zoria, Eneas, look at you! Did you think I didn’t know the word? I will not masquerade as anything in particular. I will dress in shabby clothes and let anyone who sees me draw his own conclusion.”
“But your safety… !” he said, appalled.
She extended her hand. Her Yisti knife was already there, as if by magic. “I can protect myself—Shaso dan-Heza taught me well. Besides, there is no other way. Do any of your men speak Xixian?”
He darted a helpless look at Lord Helkis. “No, I think not. A few words, perhaps…”
“Nor do I, so we are not going to fool them that way. It would be stretching the point to try to pass an entire troop of soldiers off as farmers come to sell their onions. No soldiers, Eneas. I will go myself. No one will suspect I am anything but a local girl.”
“As if that guaranteed your safety.” He gave her a hard look. “I think you have been traveling with the players too long, Princess. You have fallen in love with legends and pretense. Just remember, such things are meant to entertain, not to instruct. In our time, great Hiliometes would have eaten the famous bull, not carried him up the mountain.” He frowned. “Very well, then all I can offer you is a distraction. I will not risk my men’s lives in a full assault, but there is a deserted village on Millwheel Road just to the southeast of the autarch’s camp that his men use as a sentry garrison. If we attack it with substantial force and then withdraw I think we will draw attention and make it easier for you to slip into the camp.”
Briony realized how quickly Eneas had shifted his thinking, and she was again impressed. Was there a cleverer prince anywhere in Eion? “You would do that for me?”
“I would do much more, Princess,” he said seriously. “If only you would let me.”
As the afternoon wore on and Briony prepared, she began to wonder if Eneas had been right: was she really too much in love with old stories? Had she taken the example of Zoria or even her own great-great grandmother Lily Eddon too much to heart? Outside her tent she could hear the men readying themselves for the attack on the Millwheel Road garrison and knew that despite the prince’s best intentions some of them might not come back alive. It reminded her of a favorite saying of her father’s, “Until you’ve worn a crown, you have no idea how heavy it is.” The thought of Olin sent a pang through her, not just missing him, but thinking about the fierce impossibility of ever living up to his example. Did she really want to put men’s lives at risk to satisfy her own need to reach her father?
But what if I never have another chance to see him again? Worse, what if I could have saved him but failed to try? How could I live with that?
She owed it to her people as much as to herself, she decided. The best thing for Southmarch would be King Olin free again.
Still, it continued to trouble her as she used the little hand mirror Feival had once given her and leaned close to the candle. She carefully rubbed wet dirt onto her face, a thin wash to darken and roughen all her features, but she laid it more thickly around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks to make her face appear gaunter. She needed to look much older and much less healthy if she wanted to escape anything but cursory inspection. Even here in the camp of the Temple Dogs, where she was protected by the power of the prince himself, men stared at her when they did not think she was looking—even sometimes when they knew she was. A woman in an army camp always attracted attention, unless she was very unappetizing. Briony had been thinking all day about what she could do to make herself less interesting and she had a few ideas.
“By the Three, what is that on your face?” Eneas drew back. “Are you hurt?”
She laughed, although she was not feeling very cheerfuclass="underline" the sight of the prince in full battle array had reminded her that she was not going to be the only one taking risks. “It is a wound made from mud and a little berry juice. Never fear, it is not real blood.”
“I hope that is the only such thing I see today,” he said. “On you or any of these others.”
“We may bloody a few Xixies,” Lord Helkis suggested with a harsh laugh. “Or even a few fairies.”
Eneas shook his head. “No. I will not make that mistake twice, Miron. Until we know better what these… Qar are doing, we will treat them as we would treat Marchlanders and will not show harm to them unless we must.”
He was a good man. Why could she not feel more for him? “May the gods grant you and your men all come back safe, Prince Eneas,” she said.
“And what will help you to come back safely, Briony?”
“My disguise,” she said, pointing at her face, trying to speak lightly. “And my cunning.”
“I pray to the Three Brothers that it will be so.” He reached and took her hand before she could think about it, then brought it his lips. “Take care, Princess.”
The closer she got to the autarch’s camp the more terrified she became. It did not help that the scout who led her over the hills was a taciturn southern Syannese whose thick dialect she could barely understand.
What if I’m captured? I do not fear for myself so much—although she did, of course, how could she not? The autarch’s cruelty was legendary—but what about my people? Do I have the right to risk myself?
But of course she could not judge that, not from here. She assumed that they needed her or her father back—that the people would be miserable without an Eddon on the Southmarch throne, but perhaps it wasn’t true. Perhaps they were even happy with Hendon Tolly!
Still, they’re under attack, she reminded herself. They can’t be happy about that.
As they got closer to the top of the hills, the distant rumbles, which she had barely noticed, became louder; Briony suddenly realized that the noise was not thunder in the cloudy distance but the drumroll of the autarch’s cannons—cannons being fired at Briony’s home.
She and the Syannese scout were on a deer track at the crest of the hill when the treeline dropped away down the hillside and she could see the broad, gray-green sweep of Brenn’s Bay for the first time in months and the mainland city looking surprisingly ordinary with wisps of gray curling from its chimneys. In the distance, through the haze of smoke and low clouds, she could see Southmarch Castle itself.
The smoke was not from chimneys at all, she saw a moment later, but from the cannons the autarch’s army had set up atop the mainland seawall and in emplacements along the shore. The long guns boomed over and over, a succession of muffled crashes like irregular drumbeats. The beach where the causeway once joined the Mount to the mainland was a seething mass of tiny shapes, so many of the autarch’s soldiers moving there that it looked as if someone had kicked an anthill, but Briony saw little sign of the camp itself but for tents erected in the public squares, as well as in clusters across the open farmlands between the city and the hills. She suspected many more of the autarch’s soldiers were sheltering in the city itself, but even just the number of tents was astounding.
All of that? She felt her heart grow heavy and cold. Sweet Zoria, the southerner has brought an entire nation to our doorstep. The impossible magnitude of the forces arrayed against Southmarch made her feel sick. The little March Kingdoms could not defeat such a horde even if her father were still on the throne and they had not lost all those men at Kolkan’s Field… !