The door to the stronghold rattled open. The guard let go of Tinwright’s snout and straightened up, but not before giving it a last cruel tweak. Tinwright was left with tears welling in his eyes and a feeling like someone had set fire to the center of his face.
“Perin’s smallclothes, is the swindler crying?” a voice boomed from just above him. “Are there no true men left in this kingdom who are not soldiers? Are all the rest just pimps and coney-catchers and womanish weepers like this one?” The vast shape of Lord Constable Avin Brone loomed over him, his beard a gray-black thundercloud. “Are you grizzling because of your crimes against the crown, man? That may help you with the Trigonate priests, but not with me.”
Tinwright blinked away the tears. “No, my lord, sire, I am guilty of nothing.” “Then why are you blubbing?”
Somehow Tinwright did not think it would be a good idea to mention what the guard had done. That might turn the beating the man intended to give him into something more likely to prove fatal. “I… I have a catarrh, sire. It strikes me like this, sometime. This damp air…” He waved his hand to indicate the surroundings, but then had another moment of panic. “Not that I have any complaint against the place, sire. I have been excellently well treated.” He was babbling now. Tinwright had never seen Brone from closer than a stone’s throw: the fellow looked as though he could crush a poet’s skull with one meaty hand. “The walls are very sturdy, my lord, the floor well-made.”
“I suspect someone struck you,” said the lord constable. “If you don’t shut your mouth now, I will probably do it again myself.” He turned to one of the royal guards who had risen from the bench. “I’m taking both prisoners.” He waved to one of the pair of soldiers whom he had left waiting by the stronghold door; both wore the livery of Landsend, Brone’s own fiefdom. “Fetch this pair along,” he told his man. “Beat them if you have to.”
The stronghold guard looked a little surprised. “Do… are the prince and princess… ?” “Of course they know,” Brone growled. “Who do you think has bid me bring them out?” “Ah. Yes. Very good, my lord.”
Tinwright scrambled to his feet. He was determined to go without trouble. He did not want to be hurt anymore, and he certainly did not want the huge and frightening lord constable to get any angrier.
Despite his terror,Tinwright couldn’t help but be surprised when Brone and the two soldiers took them a long, winding way through the back of the great hall and at last into a small but beautifully appointed chapel. One look at the paintings on the wall told him that it must be the Erivor Chapel itself, dedicated to the Eddons’ patron sea god, one of the most famous rooms in all of Southmarch. The decor seemed appropriate in a way, because Gil the potboy had walked all the way there as slowly and distractedly as if he were in water over his head. Tinwright was puzzled to be in such a place, but felt a little better: surely they would not just kill him outright, if for no other reason than fear of getting blood on the celebrated wall frescoes.
Unless they strangle me. Didn’t they used to strangle traitors? His heart raced. Traitors! But this is mad —I am no traitor! I only wrote the letter because that criminal Gil blinded me, a poor poet, with his ill-gotten gold!
By the time Avin Brone was seated on a long bench that had been set near the altar, Tinwright was almost crying again.
“Quiet,” Brone said. “My lord, I… I…”
“Shut your mouth, fool. Do not think that because I have sat down I will not get up and hit you. The pleasure will be worth the exertion.”
Tinwright subsided immediately. The fists sucking out of the man’s lace cuffs were the size of festival loaves. The poet stole a look at Gil, who not only did not seem frightened, but actually seemed mostly unaware of what was going on around him. Curse you and your gold! Matty Tinwright wanted to scream at him. You are like some poison-elf out of a story, bringing bad luck to everyone.
Figuring the best way to keep himself out of trouble would be to squeeze shut his eyes and mouth and pray to the god of poets and drunkards (even though the answer to his last prayer seemed to have led him to the doorstep of a traitor’s cell), he was not aware for a moment that newcomers had entered the room. It was the girl’s voice that startled his eyes open. “These two?”
“Yes, Highness.” Brone pointed at Gil. “This is the one who made the claims. The other says he only wrote it for him, although I have my doubts—you can see which one looks more likely to have put the other up to mischief.”
Tinwright had a strong desire to shriek out his innocence, but he was slowly learning how to behave in a situation where he had no power. A half dozen new people had entered the chapel. Four of them were royal guards, who had established themselves near the door and were exchanging mildly contemptuous glances with the lord constable’s red-and-gold-clad Land-senders; the other two, he was astonished to recognize, were King Olin’s surviving children, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick.
“Why here?” the fair-haired princess asked.Tinwright had to look twice to make sure she was the one speaking. She was pretty enough in a tall, bony sort of way—Matty Tinwright liked his women soft, pale, and round-edged as a summer cloud—but her hair was loose and she was dressed very strangely in a riding skirt and hose and a long bluejacket like a man’s. Her wan, red-ringleted brother was all in black. Tinwright had heard of the prince’s perpetual mourning attire, but it was quite astounding to see Barrick Eddon so close, as though he were just another drinker in the Mint— to see both of the young regents here in front of him, as close and as real as could be, as though Tinwright himself were a court favorite they had come to visit. A fantasy about it warmed him for a flickering instant. Ah, what bliss that would be, to have royal patrons… !
“We are here because it is private,” Brone said.
“But you said they were only trying to trick us into giving them money for false information.” Tinwright suddenly lost interest in patronage and how the prince and princess were dressed. In fact, he was having great difficulty swallowing: it felt as though a hedgehog had crawled into his throat If they decided that he was guilty of trying to defraud the royal family, they might very well have his head, at the least, he would be banished to one of the smaller islands or sent to work the fields until he was old, until even a tinker’s skinny wife would not slip him a copper for his charming speech (and more physical attentions.) Trying to swindle the royal family! He pressed his legs tightly together so as not to piss himself in front of the Eddon twins.
“I said that’s what I suspected,” Brone replied, patiently ignoring the prince’s quarrelsome tone. “But if either or both of them actually do know something, I thought it would be better we found out here instead of in front of the entire court.”
Briony, who had been looking at Tinwright in a way that did not seem entirely unkind—although it did not appear particularly sympathetic either—suddenly turned to lantern-jawed Gil. “You. They say you are a potboy at an alehouse in the outer keep. How could you know anything other than tavern gossip about what happened to that Settland caravan?”
Gil stirred, but he seemed to have trouble fixing his eyes on her. “I… I do not know. I only know that I had dreams, and that those dreams showed me things.”
“Say, ‘Your Highness,’ scum,” Brone snarled.
Briony waved her hand. “He is I don’t know, simpleminded, I think. Why are we troubling with him at all? With either of these two lackwits?"