“Enough, man!” groaned the guard, but just as it seemed he was about to send them on their way Briony felt the wagon bounce and heard the wagon’s door rattle. She threw herself back on the ground and pulled the blanket up to her neck.
“And who is this? ” It was one of the other gatehouse guards. He climbed into the wagon and stood over her. Briony moaned but did not open her eyes. “Why is this girl here?” he demanded. “Let me see you.”
Briony felt his rough hand close on the blanket and pull it away. She brought her hands up to shield her belly and the bundle of rags stuffed under her threadbare dress.
“Please, sir, please!” said Finn. “That is my wife. We are taking her to the oracle’s well to ask for a safe birth. None of our other children survived ...”
“Yes,” said Hewney from behind him. “My brother-in-law has suffered terribly. There is something wrong with his wife, the poor, corrupted woman—we think she is diseased. The last birth, a noxious black discharge came out of her with a stink like rotting fish ...”
Despite her fear, Briony almost laughed as the guard backed hurriedly out of the wagon.
When the gates of the city were at last out of sight behind them, Briony emerged to sit on the steps of the wagon as it bumped down the Royal Highway, the broad river Ester shimmering beside it in the early morning sun.
“Civility to Domestic Animals?” she asked. “And rotting fish ... ? ”
Hewney gave her a superior look. “I knew a woman in Greater Stell who smelled like rotting fish all the time. She had her share of suitors, too, believe me.”
“Not to mention a clutter of cats that followed her everywhere she went,” laughed Finn. “Well done, Princess. I see you have not forgotten what we taught you.” He clasped his ample stomach. “ ‘Oh, my poor baby! Oh, poor me!’ Most convincing.”
Briony could not help laughing. It was the first time she had done so in a while. “Rogues, all of you.”
“Which still makes players more honest than most noblemen,” said Hewney.
Briony lost her smile. “Except for Feival.”
Hewney’s face turned grim as well. “Yes, except for him.”
They made it all the way to Doros Eco that night, a walled town nestled in the foothills above the river. It was a cool, windy evening. As Briony huddled in her cloak and watched Estir Makewell tending the cook pot, she realized that for the first time in months she felt… free. No, not precisely free, but the heaviness that had seemed to press down on her every day in Broadhall Palace, the weight of other people’s suspicions or expectations, was now gone. She was still worried, even terrified, by what had happened to her life and the people she loved, but here beneath the open sky, surrounded by people who didn’t want anything of her she wasn’t happy to give, she certainly felt a little more hopeful about things.
“Can I help, Estir?” she asked.
The woman looked at her with more than a little suspicion. “Why would you, Princess?”
“Because I want to. Because I don’t want to sit and watch someone else do it. I’ve had that all my life.”
Pedder Makewell’s sister snorted. “And that’s such a bad thing?” She pointed at a couple of carrots and a whiskery onion. “Make yourself happy, then. The other knife’s over there. Chop those for me.”
Briony spread a kerchief in her lap and began to cut up the vegetables. “Why are you here, Estir?”
The woman did not look at her. “What sort of question is that? Where else would I be?”
“I mean why do you travel with the players? You are a comely woman. Surely there have been men who have… who have favored you. Did none of them ever ask you to marry?”
The look of distrust returned. “As it happens, yes, though it’s no business of yours…” She suddenly went a little pale. “Forgive me, Highness, I forgot ...”
“Please, Estir, forget all you want. We were… we were almost friends, once. Can’t we be that way again?”
Estir Makewell sniffed. “Easy to say. You could have me killed, my lady. One word from you to the proper folks and I’d be bunged up in a tower, waiting for the headsman. Or whipped in the town square.” She shook her head, worried again. “Not that I think you’d do that, of course. You’re a kind girl… a proper princess, that’s what I mean ...”
It was impossible to have an ordinary conversation with the woman. Briony gave up and concentrated on chopping carrots.
As the days went by Briony began to fall back into the rhythms of life on the road. The players had the last of her money so they did not have to give performances, but they prepared sets and props and costumes for the plays Finn, Hewney, and Makewell intended to perform when they were back in the March Kingdoms again. To everyone’s astonishment young Pilney, Briony’s onetime stage husband, had fallen in love with the daughter of an innkeeper—not the treacherous Bedoyas, but the master of the Whale Horse—and had stayed behind in Tessis to marry and help his new father-in-law. Between this loss and the less charming defection of Feival Ulian, Briony found herself called on to stand in for most of the girls and youth parts. It was amusing and even enjoyable, but this time she could never quite rid herself of the knowledge that it was a temporary thing, that the world was much closer to her now than it had been on their trip into Tessis.
One obvious proof of that was the news they got in towns and from other travelers. On the trip south people had been talking about the events in the March Kingdoms, rumors about the fairy-war and the change of regime in Southmarch and about the autarch’s siege of Hierosol. Now they still talked about the autarch, but the rumors were both more fearful and more confused. Some said he’d razed Hierosol to the ground and was marching north toward Syan. Others suggested that for some reason he’d gone to Jellon and attacked that nation. Still others had him sailing toward Southmarch, a tale that made no sense at all to Briony, but still filled her with dread. What would a monster like that want with her tiny little country? Could it be true? Was she hurrying toward an even worse situation than she already feared? Of course, the other rumors were just as troubling, if not more so: if Hierosol had truly fallen, where was her father? Was Olin even alive?
It was not surprising that Briony couldn’t find as much joy in playing a part as she once had.
Hewney and Pedder Makewell came back from the town looking very discouraged.
“The king’s soldiers have already been here as well,” Makewell said, washing the dust of the road from his mouth with a gulp of sour ale. “We dare not go into town except in ones and twos.”
Briony felt her heart sink. It was not that she had particularly wanted to walk into the small town—what would there be for her, anyway, an inn’s common room where she would have to keep her face mostly hidden? A few market stalls where she might shop for some trinkets if she had any money to spare, which she did not?—but the knowledge that King Enander was hunting her so seriously, so soon, was disturbing. Worse still was the knowledge that if she were captured, Finn and the players would suffer badly for her sake.
A long shadow fell over her. “You look sad, Princess.” It was Dowan Birch, the company’s tallest member, doomed to play every ogre and cannibal giant in defiance of his true, sweet nature. Briony did not want to trouble him or the others with her fears—they all knew well enough what was going on.
“It is nothing. Why didn’t you go into town with Pedder and the others? ”