Not needles, she realized in astonishment—arrows. Very small arrows.
People were screaming on all sides now, many of them in terror. Another shadow flickered over, then another. Briony looked up into the deepening twilight, squinting at the small shapes that swept past. Birds. Hundreds of birds were flitting through the knots of fighting men, and every time one of the birds dived and pulled up, a Xixian fell back holding his face or throat. Many of the southerners were running away without concern for direction, hands over their heads as if angry bees were attacking them.
The little man’s folk, she thought as she watched the madness. Beetlewhattsit. He said they rode birds.
Many of the Xixians were already racing madly back toward the shelter of the camp. Those remaining on the beach were rapidly finding themselves outnumbered. For the first time, Briony felt she might live to see the sun rise the next day.
Another bird snapped by, brushing her face with its wing, so close that she heard the shrill battle cry of its rider: “For the queens! For the queens!” And still more followed that one, a storm of wings dropping down in dark clouds, gliding in and out among the desperately fleeing Xixians, making them stumble and fall.
Zoria’s mercy! Briony climbed to her feet. If I live through this, I’ll remember this moment all my life…
24. Disobedient Soldiers
“In another dream, Adis climbed the oak tree high into the sky. As he reached the upper branches, he found he could touch the stars themselves, which sang to him, begging him to bring back their father…”
A couple of dozen refugees from the outer keep were living in the middle of the stairwell that led to the Anglin Parlor, its walls painted in frescoes of the Connordic Mountains and scenes of the first king’s life. The folk crowding the stair were just as uninterested in the pictures on the walls as they were in making room for Matt Tinwright to get past.
He was angry to have to step over people, but he kept his feelings hidden. Some of the men were looking at his fine clothes with interest, doubtless wondering what they might fetch at one of the impromptu markets held on the green in front of the royal residence. It was shocking, of course, to be weighed for robbery by squatters right inside the king’s house, but these were not ordinary times.
One of the women reached up as he tried to get past her and ran her fingers over his sleeve. “Ooh, a pretty one in pretty clothes, aren’t you?” Tinwright pulled his arm back quickly.
One of the men took notice of his worried haste. “Hoy, are you bothering my woman?” The man started to rise. Another squatter moved a little farther into Tinwright’s path on the steps above him. “Did you hear? I asked you…”
He made his voice as hard as he could. “If you touch me, you will weep for it. I am on Hendon Tolly’s business. Do you mean to trifle with the lord protector’s servant?”
The man on the step above him exchanged a look with the other man, then sidled back a step toward the wall.
“Even his lordship can’t have it his own way forever,” said the first man, but he too was already in retreat. Tinwright recognized the tone of the squatters’ murmuring. They were still afraid of Tolly, but his hold on them was slipping. Half the outer keep had been leveled by the autarch’s cannons, and the lord protector had shown little interest in fighting back.
Tinwright made his way up the stairs as quickly as he dared, going just slowly enough to show that he thought himself safe. In an hour like the one that had fallen on Southmarch, he reflected, people slowly began to change into something else—something simpler, something frightened and angry enough to kill.
Hendon Tolly was standing at the narrow windows of the chamber looking down on the small, unhappy city covering the spot that had once been the royal green and all the space inside the walls of the keep to the base of Wolfstooth Spire, and if the base of the great tower had not been full of armed soldiers, Tinwright felt certain they would be squatting there as well.
“Ah, here is my pet poet,” Tolly said without looking away from the window, as though he could see what was behind him as well as before. “It has been a dreary afternoon. The day after tomorrow is Midsummer, you know. Speak some poetry for me.”
“What… what do you mean, Lord?” Tinwright swatted away a fly. The room seemed to be unusually full of them, even for summer.
“By the bleeding, vengeful gods, fool, you are the rhymer, not me. If you don’t know what poetry is, then I fear for the art.”
“But I bring news, my lord…”
Tolly finally turned. He was pale as a drowned earthworm, eyes deep sunken and shadowed with blue, his fine, high brow covered with sweat. His clothes and hair were in such disarray that Tinwright could half believe the dandyish Tolly had just fought his way through the same crowd that had accosted him on the stairs. But it was Hendon Tolly’s eyes that were most disturbing. Something bright and shiny but unknowable burned there—a monstrous secret, perhaps, or a vast, subtle joke that Tolly alone of all living creatures could understand.
The lord protector bent a little, as if he was bowing. His sword was in his hand so quickly Tinwright did not see the movement until the point was quivering a handsbreadth from his chest. “I do not want news ... yet,” Tolly said carefully. “I want verse. So speak, poet, or I will hand you your heart.”
Tinwright recited, nearing the end of one of Hewney’s bits of doggerel,
“Enough.” Tolly made a quick gesture like a man shaking warmth back into cold fingers; when he had finished, his sword was in its scabbard again. “Now pour me a cup of wine—you may have one yourself if you feel a need. There is a middling Perikal on the table. You will know it because it is the only jug still upright. Then you may give me your report on the Godstone.”
Tinwright picked the wine out from among the empty casualties that littered the table. As he did so, he noticed for the first time an odd bundle of clothes in the corner of the room, a bundle from which a single bare man’s foot protruded. Tinwright felt his stomach rise into his throat, choked it down, then leaned on the table for a moment with eyes closed, regaining control.
“What’s taking you so long?” Tolly turned. “Ah, him. Yes, that pig of a butler will never again tell me that we have no red wine.” He laughed suddenly. “As the blood was running out of him onto the floor, I said, ‘What do you think? Does it need to air a bit?’ He didn’t laugh.”
Trying his hardest not to look at the silent thing in the corner, Tinwright delivered the wine and quickly downed his own.