He certainly looked the type. The lord constable was as tall as Vansen, who was not a small fellow, but Brone was almost twice as wide, with a huge bushy beard and shoulders as broad as his substantial belly. In his black cloak—which Ferras suspected he had simply thrown over his night things, then stuffed his feet into boots—the older man looked like a rock on which a ship might founder… or on which a great house might be built. And there were others in the kingdom who might also think themselves a good size to wear a crown.
As the physician Chaven busied himself with the prince’s body, Avin Brone moved to stand over the two slain guardsmen. “This one is Gwatkin, yes? I do not recognize the other.”
“Caddick—a new fellow.” Ferras frowned Just days earlier the men had been mocking Caddick Longlegs for never having kissed a girl. Now the youth was new in death as well. “There would have been two more here, but I thought I would rather keep an eye on the end of the keep where the foreigners are lodged.” He swallowed an abrupt surge of bile. “There should have been two more to guard the prince…”
“And have you spoken to those guards yet? By the gods, man, what if they are all dead and the foreigners are now ranging the keep with bloody swords?”
“I have long since sent a messenger and had one back One of my best men leads them—Dyer, you know him—and he swears the Hierosoline envoy and his company have not left their rooms.”
“Ah.” Brone nudged one of the guards’ bodies with his boot toe. “Slashed. A bit fine for swordplay, looks like. But how could a troop of men attack and murder the prince without anyone knowing? And how could something smaller than a troop do such grim work?"
“I do not know how it could be a troop and go unnoticed, my lord. The corridors were not empty.” Ferras stared at Gwatkin’s wide-eyed face, the jaw hanging open as though death had been more a surprise than anything else. “But the servants did hear something earlier in the evening—arguing, some shouting, but muffled. They could make out no words and did not recognize the voices, but all agreed it did not sound like men fighting for their lives.”
“Where are the prince’s bodyservants? Where are his pages?”
“Sent away.” Ferras could not help but smart a little under Brone s questioning. Did the lord constable think that because Guard Captain Vansen’s father was a farmer, the son had no wit? That he hadn’t thought to see to these things himself? “The prince himself sent them away. They thought it was because he wanted to be alone, either to think or perhaps to discuss his sister’s fate privately with someone.”
“Someone?"
“They do not know, Lord. He was alone when he sent them away. They ended by sleeping in the kitchen with the potboys. It was one of the pages, returning for a religious trinket of some sort, who found the dying prince and raised the alarm.”
“I will speak to that one, then.” Brone carefully lowered his heavy frame into a squat beside the murdered guardsmen. He pulled at the nearest man’s jerkin. “He is wearing armor.”
“Most of the blood on him comes from a slashed throat. That is what killed him.” “The other, too?”
“His throat was slashed and bleeding, but that wasn’t what did for him, my lord. Look at his face.” Brone squinted at the second body. “What happened to his eye?”
“Something sharp went through it, my lord. And deep into his skull, too, from what I can see.” Avin Brone whistled in surprise and levered himself upright like a bear stumbling out of its cave in spring. “If we cannot find a troop of assassins, then have we but one killer? Our murderer must be a fine fighter, to kill two armored men. And Kendrick is not clumsy with a sword either.” Startled by his own words, Brone made a pass-evil. “Was not. Did he have a chance to arm himself?”
“We have seen no sign of any weapon yet except the guards.’ ” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps somehow the prince was attacked first. Perhaps he sent these guards out on some errand as he did his other servants, and they returned to find the murderer had already struck.”
Brone turned to Chaven, who had removed the golden cloth and was probing at the body. The prince regent already looked like a tomb-statue, Ferras thought, cold and white as marble. “Can you guess what killed him?” the lord constable asked.
The royal physician looked up, his round face troubled. “Oh, yes. No, better to say, I can show you why he died. Come look.”
Ferras and the lord constable moved to the bedside. Now it was Ferras who helplessly made the pass-evil—a fist around his thumb to keep Kernios the death god from noticing him. He had seen many score of violent deaths since his childhood, but he had not made the gesture for as long as he could remember.
The prince’s bloodless pallor and yellow hair made him appear disquietingly like his younger sister—Ferras suddenly felt troubled to be looking on his helpless nakedness, although he had often seen Kendrick bathing in the river after a long, dusty hunt. The corpse’s arms were covered with shallow slashes now cleaned of blood—wounds of defense. The blood had been wiped from his chest and stomach as well, but there was no way to prettify these larger wounds, half a dozen straight gashes livid along their edges and deeply, upsettingly red in their depths.
“Not a sword,” said the lord constable after a moment. He was breathing a little harshly, as if the sight disturbed him more than he let show. “A knife?”
“Perhaps.” Chaven frowned. “Perhaps a curved one—see how the cuts are wider on one end… ?”
“A curved knife?” Brone’s bushy eyebrows slid up. He looked to Ferras, who felt his heart speed with surprise and fear.
“I know who has a knife like that,” he said. “We all do,” said the lord constable.
Barrick’s head felt hollow. The rustle of the blanket Briony wore wrapped around her nightdress, the slap of his own feet, the murmur of the people in the corridor, all rolled around his skull like the roar of the ocean in a seashell. He was finding it difficult to believe that what had just happened was real.
“Prince Barrick,” someone called—one of the pages, “Is he really dead, Is our lord Kendrick really dead?" Barrick did not dare speak. Only holding his teeth clenched together kept him from bursting into tears or worse. Briony waved the onlookers back and they turned to beseech Hierarch Sisel for news instead, slowing his progress. At the end of the corridor the twins turned toward the Erivor Chapel, but then at the next turmng Briony walked swiftly in the wrong direction.
“No, this way,” Barrick said dully. His poor sister, lost in her own house. She shook her head and continued down the corridor, then turned again. “Where are we going?”
“Not to the chapel.” Her voice sounded strangely light, as though nothing unusual had happened, but when she turned toward him a blasted emptiness was in her eyes, a look so unfamiliar that it terrified him. “They’ll only find us there.”
“What? What do you mean?”
His sister took his arm and pulled him down another corridor. Only when they reached the old pantry door did he understand. “We haven’t been here for … for years.”
She pulled a stub of candle from the shelf just inside, then turned back to light it from one of the wall sconces. When they pulled the door closed behind them the light on the shelves cast all the familiar shadows that Barrick had once known as well as the shape of his own knuckles.
“Why didn’t we go to the temple?” he asked. He was half afraid to hear the answer. He had never seen his sister quite like this.