“Yes, that is the bride, Golden One,” said Panhyssir. “The Master of the Great Tent cannot be fooled.” “Good. She will be brought to me this evening, along with her parents.”
It was only when the guards’ rough hands closed on her arms and lifted her to her feet that Qinnitan realized that this astounding, unbelievable thing had happened to no one but her.
8. The Hiding Place
MEADOW AND SKY:
Dew rises, rainfalls
Between them is mist
Between them lies all that is
It had been the longest hour of his life. The young woman he admired beyond any other, without a hope of his affection ever being returned, had just spat on him and blamed him for her brother’s murder, and he was not at all certain she was wrong. Bleeding runnels showed where she had gouged his cheeks with her nails; the wounds burned, stinging with tears and sweat, both his own. But worst of all, his failure, the failure of every man sworn to protect the royal family, pressed on him like the walls of a lead coffin. King Olin had been gone for months, held prisoner in a far country. Now his son and heir was dead, butchered in his own bedchamber in the middle of Southmarch Castle.
If the world was indeed ending, thought Ferras Vansen, captain of the royal guard, then he hoped the end would come quickly. At least it would mean an end to this most horrible of nights.
Hierarch Sisel, shocked wide-eyed and murmuring to himself, had hurried from his guest chambers in the Tower of Summer, and was now struggling to remember the words to the death rite—he had not been an ordinary priest for a long time—as he leaned over Prince Kendrick’s bloodied corpse. The dead prince had been lifted onto the bed and unfolded from his death spasm; he lay now with eyes closed and arms at his sides in a semblance of peaceful rest. A cloth stitched with gold had been draped over his wounded body so that only the naked shoulders and face were showing, but scarlet flowers of blood were already beginning to bloom through the covering. Chaven the physician, as pale-faced and disturbed as Vansen had ever seen him, waited to examine the murdered prince before the royal body was taken by the Maids of Kernios to be prepared for the funeral.
Wordless as survivors of a terrible battle, the twins had not left their dead brother’s side. Blood had dried on their nightclothes—Briony in particular was so red-painted that a newcomer would be forgiven in mistaking her for the prince’s killer. She kneeled weeping on the floor by the bed, her head resting on Kendrick’s arm. The prince must be uncomfortable, Vansen thought absently, then remembered as if in a dream that the prince was now beyond all bodily discomfort.
Lord Constable Avin Brone, huge and deep-voiced and as much a part of the Eddon family as anyone not of the blood could be, was perhaps the only one who could even think of trying to move the princess from her dead brother’s side. “There are things to do, my lady,” he rumbled. “It is not meet that he should lie here untended. Come away and let the physician and the death-maids do their work.”
“I’m not leaving him.” She would not even glance at Brone.
“Talk sense to her,” the lord constable growled at her pale twin brother. Barrick looked half his years, a frightened child, his hair still tousled from bed. “Help me, Highness,” Brone asked him more gently. “We will never find what happened here, never discover the cruel hand that did this if we cannot… if we must work with a mourning family watching us.”
“The dark man… !” Briony lifted her head, a sudden feverish light in her eyes. “My maid woke dreaming of a dark man. Where is that villain Dawet? Did he do this? Did he kill… my… my… ?” Her mouth curled, lost shape, then she was weeping again, a raw, heartbreaking sound. She pressed her head against Kendrick’s side.
“My lady, you must come,” Brone told her, tugging his beard in anxious frustration. “You will have a chance for a proper farewell to the prince, I promise you.”
“He’s not a prince—he’s my brother!” “He was both, Highness.”
“It’s time to get up, Briony,” Barrick said weakly, as if telling a he he did not think anyone would believe.
Avin Brone looked to the guard captain for help Vansen moved forward, hating what his duty made him do Brone already had one of the girl’s arms in his broad hands Vansen took the other, but Briony resisted, glaring at him with such complete hatred that he let her pull away.
“Princess!” Brone hissed. “Your older brother is dead and you cannot change that. Look around you. Look there.” “Leave me alone.”
“No, gods curse this night, look out the door!”
Outside the prince regent’s chamber dozens of pale faces hovered silently in the corridors, phantoms of lantern light, the castle’s residents were crowded there, watching in disbelief and horror.
“You and your brother are the heads of the Eddon family now,” Brone told her in a harsh whisper. “The people need to see you be strong. Your grief should wait until you are private. Can you not stand and be strong for your people?”
At first she seemed more likely to spit at him than speak, but after a long moment Briony shook her head, then wiped her cheeks and eyes with the back of her hand.
“You are right, Lord Constable,” she said. “But I will not forgive you for it.”
“I am not in my post to be either loved or forgiven, Mistress Come, you are in mourning, but you are still a princess. Let us all get on with what we have to do here.” He offered her his wide arm.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Barrick?”
Her twin took an unsteady step toward her. “Are we…?”
“We will go to the chapel.” Briony Eddon’s face was a mask now, hard and pale as fired white clay. “We will pray for Kendrick there. We will light candles. And if the lord constable and this supposed captain of the guard manage to find the one who killed our brother under their very noses, we will be composed to pass fitting sentence on him.”
Taking her brother’s arm, she stepped around Ferras Vansen without a look, as though he were a cow or sheep, something too stupid to clear the way of its own volition. As she passed, he could see that her eyes were brimming over again but that she held her head straight. The servants and others in the hall shrank back against the walls to let them pass Some called out fearful questions, but Briony and her brother walked through them as though they were no more than trees, their voices only the rush of the wind.
“Eminence, will you go with them?” Avin Brone asked Hierarch Sisel when the twins had passed from earshot. “We need them out of the way so we may do our work, but my heart sinks for them and for the kingdom. Will you go and lead them in prayers, help them to find strength?”
Sisel nodded and followed the prince and princess. Vansen could not help being impressed at the way his master had dispatched the hierarch—a man of the gods who answered only to the Trigonarch himself in distant Syan—as though he were a lowly groom.
When they were all gone, Brone scowled and spat. Such disrespect in the prince’s death chamber shocked Vansen, but the lord constable seemed caught up with other things. “At least the Raven’s Gate is closed for the night,” he growled. “But, tomorrow, word of this will move from house to house through the city like a fire, and will be carried to all the lands around, whether we like it or not. We cannot shut out questions or seal in the truth. The young prince and princess will need to show themselves soon or we will have great fear in the people.”
There is a hole in the kingdom now, Ferras Vansen realized. A terrible hole. This might be the time when a strong man could step in and fill it. What if Avin Brone thought of himself as that sort of man?