Tyne and the others —they’re going to kill people, he realized. It scarcely seemed possible it was happening so swiftly Or the people may kill us. But why? He looked at the faces around him, saw a growing realization reflected between the nobles and commons that things were falling to pieces and that none of them knew how to stop it.
But I can, he realized. It was a heady feeling, although oddly cheerless. He raised his good hand and walked down a few steps Tyne snatched at him but Barrick ducked away.
“Stop!” he cried, but no one could hear his words above the shouting of frightened people most of the faces staring up at the temple portico couldn’t even see him. He turned and bounded back up the steps to where the massive bronze doors still stood halfway open—one of the cleverer priests, perhaps Sisel himself, had realized it would not be a good idea to lock out the prince regent and the other nobles while they were surrounded by a furious mob—then he yanked a pike away from one of the nearest guardsmen, who surrendered it with a look of complete confusion and misery, as though he suspected that for some inscrutable princely reason Barrick was about to strike him with his own weapon. Instead, Barrick used the heavy pike head to pound against the bronze door until the raw echoes flew across the yard. Heads turned and the shouting slowly began to diminish.
Barrick was breathing very hard: it was difficult to wield the pike with only one hand, bracing it under his arm to hammer at the door, but it had worked. Most of the crowd stared openmouthed at their young prince in front of the temple doorway.
“What do you want?” he cried. “Do you want to crush us? We are going out to fight for the city—for our land. In the holy name of the Three, what do you think you’re doing, pressing in on us like this?”
Some of those caught up with the guards stepped back, shamefaced, but others were more entangled; the process of undoing the near-riot was as complicated as unpicking delicate stitchery. A guardsman still grappling with a sullen onlooker overbalanced and fell with a clang of armor and several of his fellow guards moved forward angrily. Barrick raised his voice again. “Stop. Let the people tell me. What do you want?”
“If you and the other lords go, Prince Barrick, who will protect the city?” a man shouted. “The fairy folk will come and take our children!” cried someone else, a woman.
Barrick made a show of his confident smile. It was strange how easily this kind of thing came to him, this useful duplicity. “Who will protect the city? The city is protected by Brenn’s Bay, which is worth more than any knights, even these fine nobles. Look around you! If you -were a warlord, even the warlord of a fairy army, would you want to come up that causeway and against these high walls? And don’t forget, my sister Briony will still be here, an Eddon on the throne—believe me, even the Twilight People don’t want to get her angry.”
A few of the people laughed, but others were still calling out anxious questions. Tyne made a show of sheathing his sword.
“Please!” Barrick said to the crowd. “Let us get on with this day’s work—we are to ride soon. Avin Brone the lord constable will come back here and speak at midday, to tell you of how we will defend the castle and the city, what each of you can do to help.”
“The Three bless you, Prince Barrick!” a woman called, and the pained hope in her voice was real enough to touch him even to frighten him. “Come home safe to us!”
Other blessings and good wishes rained down, a moment before it had been clumps of dirt and even a few stones. The crowd didn’t disperse, but they opened a path so that Barrick and the rest of the knights could head back toward the Raven Gate and the inner keep.
“You handled that well, Highness.” Tyne sounded a little surprised. “The gods told you the right words to say.”
“I am an Eddon. They know my family. They know we do not lie to them.” But he couldn’t help wondering. Did I truly do that? Or did the gods indeed work through me? I felt no god, that’s all I know. In truth he was not certain how he felt at all—proud that he had quelled an anxious mob and given them hope, or distressed by how easily they could be swayed from one extreme to another?
And we are not even truly at war. Not yet, He had a sudden chill of presentiment, What will it be like when things begin to go bad?
And where will the gods be then?
The noise of hammers was almost deafening, as though a flock of monstrous woodpeckers had descended on Southmarch Castle Men clambered on every wall and tower, it seemed, putting up wooden boardings against the possibility of a siege. After the torpor that had gripped the castle in the past months, it was almost a relief to see so much activity, but Briony knew this was no mere attack from a neighboring kingdom against which they must defend themselves. The March Kingdoms were at war with a completely unknown and perhaps unknowable enemy When the men on the walls and towers looked out toward the still innocent western horizon, and they looked often, the fear on their faces was plain even from the ground Not only the workers found their attention compromised the princess regent was so busy watching the work that she stumbled into a low boxwood hedge Rose and Moina hurried forward to help her, but she shook them off, murmuring angrily.
“These cursed hedges! How can a person even walk?” Sister Utta appeared in one of the gallery archways. Despite the cool gray skies she wore only a light wrap over her plain gown. A wimple of the same color covered her hair, so that her handsome face seemed almost to hang in the air like a mask on a wall. “It would be hard to make a knot garden without hedges,” the Zorian sister said gently. “I hope you haven’t hurt yourself, Highness.”
“I’m well, I suppose.” Briony rubbed at her lower leg. She had discovered one of the disadvantages of wearing hose like a man—there was nothing to protect your shins from pokes and bumps.
Utta seemed to know what the princess regent was thinking; in any case, she smiled. “It was kind of you to visit me.”
“Not kind. I’m miserable. I have no one to talk to.” She looked up in time to catch the hurt glance that jumped from Moina to Rose. “No one but these two,” she said hastily, “and I have complained to them so much that they are surely tired of hearing my voice.”
“Never, Highness!” Rose said it in such a clattering hurry to make her feel better that Briony almost laughed. Now she knew that they were tired of listening to her.
“We worry for you, Briony, that’s all,” Moina agreed, and by forgetting to use her mistress’ title she proved that she was speaking the truth.
They are good and kind, these girls, she thought, and for a moment felt herself old enough to be their grown sister, even their mother, although small, yellow-haired Rose was her own age and dark Moina almost a full year her elder.