“You look like you might be worth something, though,” said the leader, a fellow with only one eye but very broad shoulders and an equally broad gut. “At the very least, we’ll have those fine clothes off you, my lord.”
Tinwright certainly had a few things they would like, like the prayer book he had tried to give Elan, but as the other three moved in behind their leader, Tinwright suddenly realized that these men might not stop at robbing him. But if they killed him, he’d never learn whether the Kernios statue really was Hendon’s Godstone!
He raised his hands. “Let me make something clear.” He reached slowly into his doublet and produced the letter of safe-conduct Tolly had given him. “I am on a personal mission for Lord Protector Hendon Tolly. If you think your lives are misery now, just slow me one long moment in my work for him and you’ll find out what true suffering is.”
One of the men looked at him, then turned to One-Eye. “He works for Tolly.”
“He says he does!” the leader said, but the others were already turning away.
“That’d be my balls in the lagoon and my head in after it,” said one. “Let’s go find somewhat else to bother.”
So it was that only a short time later Tinwright was back in his old room in the back of the residence, shaking Puzzle awake.
“Come on, old man, get up!” he called. “I need you to tell me what you remember about a statue of Kernios being stolen out of the Erivor Chapel.”
And despite his initial fear at being awakened so suddenly, and his subsequent pettishness, Puzzle told him everything he remembered.
“By the silent footfalls of Zoria herself,” Tinwright said when the old jester had finished, “this just gets madder and madder.” He got up, pacing as he tried to make sense of what Puzzle had suggested. “Is there no end to this mystery?” he finally groaned. “What should I do now?”
But the jester was already asleep again.
20. Words from the Burned Land
“The great god Perin destroyed Khors Moonlord, his daughter’s ravisher, after Khors himself slew the war god Volios. With the death of these two great gods, the fighting ended… ”
Briony found Prince Eneas in his tent, stripped to the waist as one of the troop barbers bandaged his wounds. “You’re hurt!” she cried. The skin of his flat belly was covered with cuts just beginning to bleed again after having been wiped clean.
He shook his head. “Nothing. I fell from my horse and was dragged a bit—these are scars made by my own mail.” Eneas had put aside his plate armor for the raid, preferring the lightness and flexibility of a coat of rings.
Briony knew that being unhorsed in the middle of a fight was no small thing, but she had also learned that Eneas preferred to make light of injuries. “And your soldiers?”
“We had a few spites but lost not a man—but I am even more relieved to see you, Briony. I almost dare not ask—did you find your father?”
She told him the story, or at least the bare bones, since many of the things that had passed between her and Olin were for the family’s ears alone. The prince listened carefully.
“It is splendid news that you found him, and that his spirit is still strong,” he said when she had finished. “Splendid—but I wonder at what he says about Midsummer. Does the autarch really believe in his superstitions so strongly that he would risk an attack when the siege itself would do his work in a matter of a few weeks or less?”
“My father heard it from the autarch himself. Everyone says this Sulepis is quite mad!”
Eneas frowned. “I suppose. But it gives us very little time. Have you rested?”
“I’m well, yes.” The scout had brought her back to camp just before sunrise, and Briony had promptly fallen directly into a dark, deep sleep, so that now the whole evening, especially speaking to her father, felt like a dream.
“But what will we do?” she asked. “We have so little time, and I saw the Xixian camp—they are so many! Close to ten thousand men camped on the mainland, more than half of them fighters. And from what I heard, many more have already gone into the tunnels. I think they plan to attack the castle from below, through Funderling Town.”
“Funderling… ?” He looked at her blankly for a moment, then nodded. “Ah, yes, the Kallikan settlement. I have heard of it—the fabled ceiling, is that right? Your father must be correct. There could be no other reason for the autarch to be in such haste—Hendon Tolly is barely fighting back at all and the autarch’s ships rule the bay. I would guess the castle might even surrender in a matter of days if the Xixians simply kept knocking down the walls with their cannons.”
Briony felt a flare of anger. “Tolly is a monster, but there are still men in Southmarch—and women, too!—who will not give in so easily.”
“I believe you, Princess.” Eneas smiled; it was approving, not mocking. “I have seen the stuff the country’s royal family is made of, so why would I doubt their subjects? Still, we cannot make any decisions until tomorrow at the earliest. That is when the first of the spies we have sent into the camp will begin to report back on the autarch’s full strength and perhaps even something of his plans.…”
“No!” She realized she had shouted: everyone in the tent was staring at her. “I mean… my father… I do not want to wait before we free him. I’ve thought of a way to do it, but if we wait longer they may take him somewhere beyond our reach!”
It took Briony a moment to realize that the prince was looking at her strangely, as was his lieutenant and several others. “You do not know?” he asked.
“Know what?” But already she had that vertiginous feeling, what had seemed solid crumbling away beneath her. “Tell me!”
Eneas sighed. “Your father has already been moved,” he said. “Some of our spies say that an armed party of more than a hundred men escorted a prisoner to the tunnels in the rocky hills along the bay.” He reached out a hand to her, but Briony pulled back. “I am sorry, Princess, but it was your father, King Olin. He is no longer within our reach—at least not for the present.”
The tears which she had held back ever since the night before suddenly filled her eyes; Briony knew she could not hold them in. She turned sharply and walked out of the tent, desperate to find a place where Eneas and the rest could not hear her when she began to weep in earnest.
“It will do no good to argue with her,” Saqri warned, but Barrick had grown weary of being told what to do and what to think by the Qar in all their manifestations. He followed the retreating forms of Yasammez and her small troop of bodyguards as they walked back through the passageways toward the cavern where they were camped.
The fearsome dark lady of the fairies had already disappeared into her tent when he arrived. The Elemental before the doorway did not want to let him in, but Barrick simply stood, ignoring the thing’s gestures and even the silent, resentful threats the thing offered him, thought to thought. The Fireflower suggested that he had standing among these folk and he was determined to use it. The flickering of the Elemental’s Profound Light through the gaps in the shrouding cloth grew brighter and more agitated, but Barrick Eddon was not going to let himself be treated like a servant. He might be a fool, he might be a mortal fool, but he had survived impossible hardships to be here—Yasammez would not escape him so easily.
At last the half-hidden fires guttered and diminished. The Elemental stepped aside, but not without a last flare of protest as Barrick walked past.