She staggered to her feet, weak-kneed and exhausted although she hadn't moved for a long, long time. Had it all been a dream, then-the demigoddess Lisiya, the food, the stories of the gods and their battles? Only the dream of someone lost and wandering?
But wait-Lisiya had given her something, some amulet to carry. Where was it? Briony patted at the pockets in the sleeves of her ragged clothing, the long blouse of the boy she had killed, spattered with the dried brown of his blood…
Defending myself, she thought, feeling a warming glow of anger. Defend¬ing myself from kidnap and rape!
She could find no trace of any goddess-given trinket. Her heart seemed heavy and cold as a stone at the bottom of a well. She must have imagined it all.
She still had something left in her of the Briony Eddon who been a queen in all but name, however, the young woman who had woken up every morning for months with the weight of her people's well-being press¬ing down on her, the Briony who had learned to trust herself in the midst of flattering counselors and scheming enemies. That Briony possessed more than a little of her family's famously stubborn strength and was not going to give in so easily, even now. She began to retrace her own steps-although noting with another pang that hers seemed to be the only footprints- searching along the forest fringe for any trace of her hours with Lisiya, for any real evidence of what had happened.
She found the amulet at last, almost by pure chance: the white threads had caught on a hanging branch several hundred steps into the forest, where it dangled like a tiny oblong moon. Briony gently teased the bird skull free, sending a prayer of gratitude to Zoria, and then belatedly to Lisiya herself, for this proof she had not imagined it all. She held it to her nose and smelled the dried flowers whose strange, musty tang reminded her of the spice jars in the castle kitchens, then slipped it into her pocket. She would have to find a cord for it, to keep it safe.
Could it all have been true, then-all Lisiya's words, her strange tales?
Briony had a sudden, horrifying thought: if the charm was real, then Lisiya had brought her to the edge of the forest for a reason-but Briony was no longer there.
Slipping, stumbling in the growing dark, she hurried back over the wet and uneven, leaf-slicked ground, through the skeletal trees.
She burst out of the forest into the misty emptiness of early evening on the featureless meadows, and for a moment saw nothing. Then, just before she was about to throw herself down to the damp, grassy ground to gasp some breath back into her chest, she saw a single bobbing light moving away from her into the murk to her left, a lantern on a wagon going south toward Syan and faraway Hierosol. The witch, the goddess, whatever or whoever she was, had brought Briony here for a reason after all. She hob¬bled after the receding light, praying that these strangers were not bandits and wondering how she would explain why she was walking alone on the empty grasslands beside the Whitewood.
•**
The two wagons on either side of the largeTirc made a soil of coun-terfeit town: for a few moments Briony could almost feel herself back in the midst of civilization. The man talking to her was certainly civilized enough, his speech as round and precise as his appearance..She knew him slightly, although she had not realized it until he gave his name, Finn Teodoros, and she was desperately grateful that they had never met in person. He was a poet and playwright who in years past had done some work for Brone and others at court, and had once or twice written pretty speeches for Orphanstide or Perinsday ceremonies. The rest of his traveling companions were players (as far as she could tell from the things they said to each other) taking their wagons on a winter tour of the provinces and beyond. As Teodoros questioned her, some of the oth¬ers at the fire listened with interest, but most seemed far more involved with eating, or drinking as much wine as possible. Among the latter was another Briony thought she had heard of, Nevin or Hewney by name, another poet and-as her ladies Rose and Moina had informed her in tones mixing horror with a possibly indecent fascination-a very bad man indeed.
"So you say your name is Timoid, young man?" Finn Teodoros nodded at her sagely. "It smacks somewhat of a straw-covered bumpkin just off the channel boat from Connord. Perhaps we should call you Tim."
Briony, who had picked the name oЈ the Eddon family priest, could only nod.
"Strange, though, since the channel boat does not, as far as I know, make landfall in the midst of the Whitewood. Nor do you sound Connord-fresh. You say you have been wandering here how long?"
"Days, maybe weeks, my lord." She tried to keep her voice boyishly gruff and her words what she imagined would be peasant-simple. "I do not know for certain." This at least was true, but she was glad her dirty face would hide the flush of her fear. "And I am not from Connord but Southmarch." She had hoped to pass herself off as a wandering prentice, but she had ex¬pected to encounter some tradesman or merchant, not this shrewd-faced familiar of her own court.
"Do not task him so," said the tall one named Dowan-a giant of a fel¬low, so big that Briony did not reach near to his shoulder, and Olin Eddon's daughter was not a small girl. "The lad is weary and hungry, and cold."
"And looking to ease those deficits at our expense," said a woman the others had called Estir. Her dark hair was shot with gray and although her
face mighl be called pretty, she had the soured look of someone who re¬membered every slight ever done to her.
"We could use another hand on the ropes," offered a handsome, brown-skinned youth, one of the few who seemed near Briony's own age. He spoke lazily, as one accustomed to getting his way, and she wondered if he was related to the owner of the troop. Finn Teodoros had introduced the company as Makewell's Men, which was the usual sort of name for a troop of traveling players-perhaps the young man was Makewell's son, or even Makewell himself.
"Well, that is at first easy enough to accomplish without loss, Estir," said Teodoros. "He shall have my share tonight, since my stomach pains me a bit. And he shall sleep with me in the wagon-unless that is not mine to grant?"
The woman named Estir scowled, but waved her hand as though it was of little import to her.
"Come, then, wandering Tim," said Teodoros, rising heavily from his seat on the wagon's narrow steps. He was no older than her father and what hair he had showed little gray, but he moved like an aged man. "You can have my meal and we can speak more, and perhaps I shall sniff out what use you might be, since no one travels with us who cannot earn his way."
"That's not all you'll sniff out, I'll wager," said one of the drinkers. His words were mumbled in a way that suggested he had started his drinking long before sunset. He was handsome in a thick-jawed way, with a shock of dark hair.
"Thank you, Pedder," said Teodoros with a hint of irritation. "Estir, per¬haps you could see that your brother puts a little food in his stomach to off¬set the drink. If he is ill again this tennight I fear we will have anqther disaster with Xarpedon, because Hewney does not know it."
"I wrote it, curse you!" bellowed Hewney, a bearded, balding man with the look of an aging courtier who still clung to the memory of his hand¬some youth.
"Writing it and remembering it are two different things, Nevin," said Teodoros reasonably."Come along, young Tim-we will talk while you eat."
Once inside the tiny wagon the scrivener lowered himself onto the small plank bed and gestured at a covered bowl sitting on the folding shelf that seemed, judging by the quills, pens, and ink bottles hanging in a pocketed leather pouch, to double as a writing table. "I did not bring a spoon. There is a basin of water you can use to wash your hands."