She was not certain she liked the word "deserved," which made her feci like a child or a prisoner, but she was excited at the thought of seeing something other than the inside of the merchant's house. A cautious thought occurred to her. "And Lord Shaso…? He says it is allowed?"
"He is coming, too."
"But how can I go out? My face is well-known, at least to some…"
"Ah, that is why we must begin to work on you now, king's daughter." Idite smiled with mischievous pleasure. "You will see!"
By the time the sun had crept above the walls and morning had truly come, Briony sat alone in the women's quarters waiting for the others to return from their prayers, which were apparently led by a Tuani priest who came to the hadar and held forth in the courtyard. She lifted the beautiful little lotus mirror Idite had placed in her hands, wondering at the changes the women had made. Briony's skin, fair and freckled, at least in summer¬time, had been covered all over in powdery light brown paint from one of Idite's pots, so that she was now only a shade or two paler than Shaso him¬self. Her eyes had been heavily lined with kohl, her golden hair pulled back so that not a wisp of it showed beneath the tight-fitting white hood. Only her eyes had not changed, the green she had shared with her brother Kendrick as pale as Akaris jade. Idite and the other women had laughed at the contrast, saying that her eyes in that dark skin made her look like a Xix-ian witch, that she needed only flame-colored hair to complete the picture. This had made her think of redling Barrick, and to her horror she had sud¬denly found herself weeping, at which point everything had stopped while her eyes and cheeks were dabbed dry and repairs were made. The kohl had to be reapplied completely. As she looked in the mirror now, Briony saw a black spot of it that had dripped from her jaw to her wrist, and she dabbed it away.
Where was he? Where was her brother now?
For a moment a wave of such pure pain washed over her that she could barely breathe and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly shut. Every kindness that the people of this house did her only made her feel more lost, the life she knew farther away. She could live without the throne of Southmarch,
even without Southmarch itself, strange and lonely as that: was to contem¬plate, but if she could not ever see her father or her brother again she felt sure she would die.
Barrick, where are you? Where have you gone? Are you safe? Do you ever think of me?
Suddenly, prodded by something she could not understand, could barely feel, she opened her eyes. There, hovering in the mirror behind her own sorrowing features like the bottom of a pond seen through reflections on its surface, was her twin's death-pale face, eyes closed. His arms lay across his chest and his wrists were chained.
"Barrick!" she shrieked, but a moment later he was gone; only her own, now-alien face looked back. I'm going mad, she thought, staring at the hor¬rified, dark-skinned stranger in the mirror, and again began to weep, this time with no thought for the painstaking work of Idite and the other women.
As they wound their way through the narrow streets of Landers Port, Briony, a little recovered but still shaken, was surprised by how nice it was merely to be in the chill open air. Still, despite her mummer's paint and head-to-toe garb, she felt almost naked being out among strangers, and every time she noticed someone looking at her she had to fight an urge to turn and hurry back to the shelter of the merchant's house. For the first time she really felt what Shaso had said so many times: if the wrong person saw her, it could mean her death. She kept her head down as much as she could, but after so long inside it was hard not to look around a little.
Many other people were out walking, most of them heading in the same direction as Briony's party, and the numbers grew as their small procession wound down toward the seafront. Most seemed to be Xandians, dressed in similar fashion to the merchant's family, the women in long robes, hoods, and veils, the men's pale garb made festive by long vests in bright colors, sparkling with gold thread. Effir dan-Mozan was at the front of their own little company, nodding gravely to other robed men, and even to a few workaday Marrinswalk folk who called greetings to him. His nephew Tal-ibo walked behind him but in front of the women, head held high like a shepherd with a flock of prize sheep. Even Shaso had come, although he hid his features under high neck-scarf and a four-cornered Tuani hat pulled low over his eyes.
The women, with Briony at their center to keep her as far as possible from curious stares, her disguise notwithstanding, followed in a whispering, laughing crowd. This, as far as Briony could tell, was the one day they were always allowed out of the house, and despite the presence of the important men of the household, they seemed as confident and cheerful as they did in the privacy of the women's quarters.
Landers Port seemed bigger than Briony remembered-not that she had found much chance to examine it when she'd arrived after dark, exhausted and hungry and dripping wet. It was set on a hillside by a wide, shallow bay. A walled manor house and a gray stone temple watched over it all from the hill's crest. Shaso had told her that the manor belonged to a baron named Iomer, whom she had apparently met but did not remember, a stout land¬holder with more interest in his fruit trees and pigs than in life at South-march court, which perhaps explained his relative anonymity.
The poor part of town, of which the Dan-Mozan house was one of the few jewels, was located on the south side of the hill near the base, far from the ocean and far from the manor. Thus they did not climb now or de¬scend on this journey so much as they made their way around the bulk of the hill. Since the rich lived high and the poor lived low, as in so many other towns in the March Kingdoms, they passed not from poor neighbor¬hoods to wealthy ones, but from the part of town where the poor had mostly dark skin, or had the Skimmer cast, to places where poverty wore a skin as pale as Briony's own.
Or as pale as mine before they put all this paint on me, at least.
It was interesting and a little disturbing to be stared at for once, not for who she was-something she had grown used to over the years but was never fond of-but because she was traveling in a group of brown-skinned folk. Some people looked only with curiosity, but others, for no reason Briony could tell, stared with unhidden loathing. A few drunken men even leaned out of their doors to shout after them, but seemed to lose interest when they saw the knives on the Tuani men's belts.
Briony found it surprisingly hard to be glared at by people she did not know, although she was clever enough to understand it was the other side of the coin from all those folk who had cheered her and showered bless¬ings on her only because she was part of King Olin's privileged family. But, other side of the coin or not, it was one thing to be loved by strangers, most definitely another to be hated by them.
So this is how it has been for Shaso as long as he's been here. She could make
nothing of the thought just now, with so much happening around Iter, but she folded it like a letter and put it away to be examined later.
Soon, as the narrow road wound between the close-leaning houses, nearing the waterfront, Briony discovered that they were seeing more brown faces again and more wide-eyed, closemouthed Skimmer folk. The smell of the bay also grew stronger, a slightly spoiled tang that seemed to flavor every breath, every thought. She wondered if she would ever again cross the wide waters of Brenn's Bay to return home openly and safely, whether her family would ever be together again. Seeing Barrick in the mirror that way had frightened her-was it an omen? Were the gods try¬ing to tell her something? But she knew that people sometimes dreamed of things that worried them, and whether the gods had sent her this wak¬ing dream or not; it was certain that Barrick and his fate were the things that most worried her.