She could not let herself be distracted. He was too smooth, too quick— it must be how a mouse felt in front of a snake. But this mouse would not be so easily confused. “Because you are a stranger and no friend, yes. And because, as you may know, my brother seems to have been killed with a Tuani knife. Like the one on your belt.”
Dawet looked down. “I would take it out to let you see that there is no blood upon it, Princess, but your guard captain tied it tightly in its sheath before I was brought to you.”
Briony looked up to see that Ferras Vansen, who had ignored her earlier, was now staring at her fixedly. But upon catching her eye he colored and turned his gaze to the floor. Is the man mad?
“He would have preferred to take it away entirely,” Dawet continued, “but among my people we do not take off our knives once we have reached the age of manhood. Unless we are in bed.”
Now she was the one to flush. “You speak many words, my lord Dawet, but few to any point. Knives can be washed. Reputations are not so easily made clean and new.”
His eyes widened. “Are we crossing blades again, Highness, testing each other’s style of battle? No, I think I will not engage, for I see rather that you are one of those who trades blows only for a little while, then aims straight for the heart. What do you know of me, Princess? Or what do you think you know of me?”
“More than I care to remember. Shaso told us of what happened to his daughter.”
And now something passed across the high-boned face that surprised her—not shame, or irritation at being caught out, but a real and indignant anger like the god Perin when he awoke on Mount Xandos to find his hammer stolen. “Ah, did he?”
“Yes. And that your cruelty drove her into a temple, and that she died there.”
Now Dawet’s anger turned into something even stranger—a sudden banking of the flame, not unlike the way Shaso often retreated behind his own stony features. Not surprising, perhaps—they were related, after all. “She died, yes. And he said that I am the one who drove her there?”
“Is it not true, sir?”
He let his long-lashed eyes close for a moment. When the lids sprang up again, his eyes fixed on hers. “There are many kinds of truth, my lady. One is that I ruined a girl of a noble house in my own land. Another might be that I loved her, and that the wound done to her reputation by the gossiping of witless women in the palace was greater than any harm I ever did her. And that when her father drove her out of their house, I would have taken her in, would have made her my own, but that she could not bear to have her father and mother cast her out of their lives forever. She hoped— foolishly, I thought—that someday they would take her back. So, instead, she went to the temple. Did she die there? Yes Of a broken heart? Yes, perhaps. But who broke it?” He shook his head and for the first time looked around at the Southmarch nobles. With his gaze no longer on her, Briony realized she had been leaning forward in her chair. “Who broke it?” he said again, quietly, but with a force that suggested he was truly addressing the entire room. “That is a question that even the wisest folk might dispute.”
She sat back, a bit uncertain.The nobles, especially the council members, watched her suspiciously. Nor could she entirely blame them this time- it seemed to her, and must have been very clear to them, that for some time there had been no one in the room but herself and the dark stranger.
“So… so you blame Shaso for his own daughter’s death?”
He gave a kind of shrug. “Wise folk may toy with any contention, my lady, and truth seems sometimes entirely mutable. That is the age in which we live.”
“Which is to say you will not answer that question outright, since you have so prettily painted the picture of it already without having to show yourself mean-spirited. But if you feel that way, I must suppose you would also believe he could be the murderer of my brother.”
Dawet looked a little surprised. “Has he not confessed it? Someone told me that he had. I thought you prodded me about my innocence in your brother’s death only to see whether because I was his countryman I was also his confederate. But I assure you, my lady, find any Tuani beyond infancy and he will tell you of Shaso’s famous hatred of me.” He frowned. “But if it is not proved that he did it—then, no. I would not think him a murderer.”
“What?” Briony’s voice was much louder than she would wish Gailon of Summerfield looked at her disapprovingly. She felt a momentary urge to have the young duke clapped in leg irons or something—queens used to be able to do such things, so why not the princess regent? Despite his other faults, Dawet dan-Faar at least did not frown at her like an old servant just because she had raised her voice. “Do you jest?” she demanded. “You hate the man. It is clear in your every word and glance?"
The emissary shook his head. “I do not love him, and just as he thinks I have done him harm, I think he has done me as much or more. But my disregard does not make him a murderer. I cannot believe he would treacherously kill someone, especially not someone of your family.”
“What do you mean?”
“All know that he owed your father a debt of honor. When my father fought against the last Autarch, Parnad the Unsleeping, Shaso did not return to help because he could not break his oath to your father. When his wife was ill, he also did not return, because he could not break that oath, nor did he return for her funeral. And so now I am asked whether I think he would kill Olin’s son? Drunkenly and treacherously? There may be stiffer spines and more stubborn hearts that have come out of Xand than Shaso dan-Heza’s—but I have not seen one.”
What he said made her feel even more uncertain of things, and not just about Shaso’s guilt. Was this man Dawet a clever monster, or was he misunderstood? People often thought Barrick unpleasant, even cruel, because they did not see the whole of him.
Barrick. A sudden twinge of alarm. He is lying ill in bed. I should go to him In truth, the conversation had made her feel quite disturbed: she would not be unhappy to stop it. “I will consider your words, Lord Dawet. Now you may go.”
He bowed once more. “Again, my condolences, Lady.”
As he left, the councillors still watched her, but their faces were more shuttered than before. She suddenly realized that she had known most of them her entire life, these neighbors and family friends and even relatives, but did not trust a single one.
“Make yourself vulnerable to no one but your family,” her father had once said. “Because that makes a small enough company that you can watch them all carefully.” She had thought at the time he was joking.
But I have little family left, anyway, she thought. Mother and Kendrick are dead. Father is gone and may never come back. All I have is Barrick.
The room seemed full of hateful strangers. Suddenly, all she wanted was to see her twin. She stood up and walked out of the throne room without another word, so quickly that the guards had to scramble to catch up to her.
“It will not be easy,” Chert told Opal as he finished his soup. “We don’t have enough men to do a proper job, and the guild may not be able to get me more in time—the funeral is to be in five days. So for now we’re just throwing rubble down into the very pits where we were going to be working before the prince died. It’ll all have to be cleared out again afterward.”