"I know." She took a step back. "You are playing for time. You cannot guess."
"Ah, but I can. Let me consider what I know already." He stroked his beard, the very picture of a philosopher from the Sacred Trigon Academy. "You are here, that is the first thing to be pondered. Not everyone is allowed into this inner garden-I myself have only recently been granted the privi¬lege. You are well dressed, in silk and a fine lace collar, so I feel rather cer¬tain you are not one of the pastry-makers gathering mint or a chambermaid on your way to air the linens. If you are either of those you are shirking your chores most unconscionably, but to me you do not have the face of a true idler."
She laughed despite herself. He was talking nonsense, she knew, amus¬ing himself and her, but also there was more to it. He was showing her how he would think about things if he truly meant to solve a problem. "So, we must assume you are one of the ladies of the castle, and in fact I see that you have brought with you a formidable retinue." He gestured to Teloni and the others, who watched her with wide eyes, as though Pelaya had clambered down into a wolf's den. "One of them addressed you by first name, which suggests a familiarity a lady might show to one of her maids or other friends, but since there is a sameness to your features-yours are a
bit finer, more delicate, but I hope you will keep that as our secret-I would guess that the two of you are related. Sisters?"
She looked at him sternly. She was not going to be so easily tricked into helping him.
"Well, then I will declare it so for the sake of my argument. Sisters. Now, I know well that my captor, the lord protector, has no declared offspring. Some might say he was the better for that-they can be difficult creatures, children-but I am not one of them. However much I pity his childless¬ness, though, I cannot make him your father, no matter how I puzzle the facts, so I must look elsewhere. Of his chief ministers, some are too dark or too pale of skin, some too old, and some too much inclined otherwise to be the fathers of handsome young women like your sister and yourself, so I must narrow my guesses to those whom I know to have children. I have been here more than half a year, so I have learned a little." He smiled. "In fact, I see now that your companions are waving for you in earnest, and I must cut to the bone of the matter before they drag you away. My best guess is that your father is this castle's steward, Count Perivos Akuanis, and that you are his younger daughter, while the dark-haired girl there is his older daughter, Teloni."
She glared at him. "You knew it all along."
"No, I must sincerely protest that I did not, although it has become clear to me as we talked. I think I may have seen you once with your father, but I have only now remembered."
"I'm not certain I believe you."
"I would not lie to a young woman named after the sea. The sea god is my family's patron, and the sea itself has become very precious to me these days. From one corner of my room in the tower, if I bend down just so, I can see it at the edge of a window. Of such things are hearts made strong enough to last." He tipped his head, almost a bow. "And, the truth is, you remind me of my own daughter, who also has a weakness for old dogs and useless strays, although I think you are a few years younger." Now his face became a little strange, as though a sudden pain had bitten at him but he was determined not to show it. "But children change so quickly-here and then gone. Everything changes." For a moment whatever pained him seemed to take his breath away. It was a long time before he spoke again. "And how many years have you, Lady Pelaya?"
"I am twelve. I will be married next year or the year after, they say, after my sister Teloni is married."
I wish you much happiness, now and later. Your friends look as though they are about to call for the lord protector to come rescue you. Perhaps you should go."
She began to turn, then stopped. "When I said you were King Olin of Southmarch, why did you say I was only half right? Isn't that who you are? Everyone knows about you."
"1 am Olin of Southniarch, but no man is king when he is another man's prisoner." Even the sad, tired smile did not make an appearance this time. "Go on, young Pelaya of the Ocean. The others are waiting. The grace of Zoria on you-it has been a pleasure to speak with you."
Leaving the courtyard garden, the other girls surrounded Pelaya as though she were a deserter being dragged back to justice. She stole one look back but the man was staring at nothing again-watching clouds, per¬haps, or the endless procession of waves in the strait: there was little else he could see from the high-walled garden.
"You should not have spoken to him," Teloni said. "He is a prisoner-a foreigner! Father will be furious."
"Yes." Pelaya felt sad, but also different-strange, as though she had learned something talking to the prisoner, something that had changed her, although she could not imagine what that might be. "Yes, I expect he will."
10
Crooked and his Great-Grandmother
The great family of Twilight was already mighty when the ancestors
of our people first came to the land, and the newcomers were drawn to
one or the other of the twin tribes, the children of Breeze or the children
of Moisture, who were always contesting.
One day Lord Silvergleam of the Breeze clan was out riding, and caught
sight of Pale Daughter, the child of Thunder, son of Moisture, as lovely as
a white stone. She also saw him, so tall and hopeful, and their hearts
found a shared melody that will never be lost until the world ends.
Thus began the Long Defeat.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
BARRICK EDDON WOKE UP in the grip of utter terror, feeling i as though his heart might crack like an egg. He could smell some¬thing burning, but the world was cold and astonishingly dark. For long moments he had no idea of where he was. Out of doors, yes-the rus¬tle and creak of trees in the wind was unmistakable… He was behind the Shadowline, of course.
Barrick felt as though he had just awakened from a long, bizarre dream-a feeling he knew all too well-but the waking was not much more reassuring than the dream. The endless twilight of these lands had actually ended, but only because the sky had turned black and not |usl night dark, but empty of stars, too, as though some angry god had thrown a cloak over all of creation. Had it not been for the last of the coals still glowing in the stone fire circle, the darkness would have been complete. And that terrible, acrid smell…
Smoke. Gyir said it was the smoke from some huge fire, filling the sky, killing the light. Barrick's eyes had stung for most of a day, he remembered now, and they had been forced to stop riding because he and Vansen the guard captain had trouble breathing.
Barrick crawled to the fire and poked the embers. Vansen was asleep with his mouth open, wearing his arming-cap against the chill. Why was the man still here? Why hadn't he turned and ridden back to Southmarch as any sane person would have done? Instead, here he lay beside his new friend, that ugly, splotch-feathered raven (which was sleeping too, appar-endy, its head under its wing). Barrick disliked the raven intensely, although he could not say why.
When he looked at Gyir Barrick's heart sped again, even as his stomach seemed to twist inside him. By all the gods, the fairy was a horror! He dimly remembered a feeling of friendship, of kinship even, between himself and this faceless abomination that had led an army of other monsters into the lands of real people, to burn and to kill. How could such madness be? And now he was virtually this creature's prisoner, being led toward the gods only knew what kind of horrible fate!
Barrick looked to the place the horses stood, mostly in shadow, Vansen's slumbering mount and the restless bulk of the Twilight horse which had somehow become Barrick's own, although he did not remember it hap¬pening. / could be in the saddle and riding away in an instant, he realized. Should he wake Vansen? Did he dare risk the time? Barrick's hand slid across the ground until it closed on the pommel of his falchion. Even bet¬ter: he could have the long, sharp edge on the Gyir-reature's throat just as quickly.