He raised his thin shoulders in a shrug. “If somebody is looking for Makewell’s Men, they are more apt to remember me than any of the others.”
She lifted her hand to her mouth in surprise. “Oh, Dowan, I am so sorry! I didn’t even think of that. I have trapped you here, skulking in camp, just like I have trapped myself.”
He smiled sadly. “It’s just as well, truly. People always stare at me wherever I go and I am weary of it. I’m happy to sit here,” he gestured around their camp with his impossibly long arm, “where nobody notices me.”
“That’s a very small dream, Dowan.”
“Oh, I have bigger ones than that. I dream of a day when I can have a farm of my own… settle down with a good woman ...” He blushed suddenly and looked away. “And children, of course ...”
“Birch!” called Pedder Makewell. “Why are you idling when there is mending to do?”
He rolled his eyes and Briony laughed. “Coming, Pedder.”
“I meant to ask you,” she said, “how is it that you learned to sew so well?”
“Before I became a player I studied to be a priest, and lived with other acolytes in the temple of Onir Iaris. There were no women, of course, and we all had tasks. Some discovered themselves to be cooks. Some didn’t, but thought they were,” he said, laughing a little. “Me, I found myself to be reasonably skilled with a needle and thread.”
“I wish I could say the same. My father used to say that I stitched like a woman killing spiders with a broom—poke, poke, poke ...” Now Briony laughed, too, although it hurt to think of Olin. “Gods, how I miss him!”
“He still lives, you said. You shall see each other again.” Birch slowly nodded. “Trust me. I often have such feelings and they are usually right ...”
“You are going to have the feeling of losing your place in the world and having to beg for your meals,” called Pedder Makewell loudly. “Get on with your work, you great stilting stork!”
“We had one like him in the temple, too,” Birch whispered to Briony as he stood. “We poured a bucket of water over him one night when he slept, then swore that he pissed his own bed.”
As she laughed the tall man started to walk away, then turned. A strange, distracted look had come over his face.
“Do not forget, Princess,” he told her. “You will see him again. Be ready to say what you need to say.”
Qinnitan finally learned her captor’s first name, but largely by chance. She also learned something else that she hoped she could put to better use than any name.
Half a tennight or more had passed since she had dreamed of Barrick turning his back to her on the hilltop, and although she had dreamed of the red-haired boy again he never responded and each time he seemed farther away. The helplessness of her situation had begun to wear away at her resolve. She sat for hours each day watching the distant coastline slide past, struggling to think of some plan for escape. Sometimes other boats passed nearby, but she knew that even if she called to them no one would try to help her, and that even if someone did they couldn’t outfight the demon Vo, so she kept her mouth shut. She had already cost poor Pigeon his fingers—why cause the death of an innocent fisherman?
On the night she learned Vo’s first name she had lain brooding for a long time before falling asleep. Padding footfalls woke her in the thin, cold hours after midnight; she could tell by the step that it was Vo who paced the deck. She lay listening to him as he walked back and forth in a tight pattern of which her own position might have been the midway point. She wondered at the muttering that every now and then rose above the continuous slap and slosh of the waves against the boat until she realized it was her captor talking to himself in Xixian.
The thought of such an iron-willed man talking to himself was frightening enough: it betokened madness and loss of control, and although Vo terrified her, Qinnitan knew that if he remained in his right mind she would at least live until he handed her to the autarch. But Sulepis had put something inside him, and if that were hurting him badly, or if the drops of poison he took each day were somehow sickening his mind, anything could happen. So Qinnitan lay trembling in the dark, listening as he paced around the deck.
He seemed to be having a conversation with someone, or at least was speaking as though someone was listening. Much of his talk seemed a list of grievances, many of which meant nothing to Qinnitan—some woman who had looked at him mockingly, a man who had thought himself superior, another man who had fancied himself clever. All had been proved wrong, it seemed, at least in her captor’s fevered mind, and now he was explaining this to some imagined auditor.
“Skinless, now, every one of them.” His hissing, triumphant voice was so chilling that it was all she could do not to cry out. “Skinless and eyeless and weeping blood in the dust of the afterlife. Because Daikonas Vo will not be mocked ...”
A few moments later he stopped a little distance away. She risked opening her eyes a little, but could not quite make out what he was doing: Vo’s head was thrown back, as if he downed a cup of wine, but the movement lasted a moment only.
The poison, she realized. Whatever was in the black bottle, he was taking it at night and not just in the morning as she’d thought. Did he always do that? Or was this something new?
When Daikonas Vo had finished he staggered a little and almost fell, which was the strangest thing yet: she had never seen him anything less than dangerously graceful. He sat down on the deck with his back against the mast and let his chin sag to his chest, then fell silent, as though he had dropped into a deep slumber.
Learning his first name brought Qinnitan nothing. Hearing him talking angrily to himself merely left her even more frightened than she had been—he truly did seem to be going mad. But what stuck in her thoughts was the way his body so quickly grew slack and heavy after he put the poison to his lips.
That was indeed something worth thinking about.
34. Son of the First Stone
“Eenur, the king of the fairies, is said to be blind. Some say he took this wound when he fought on the side of Zmeos Whitefire during the Theomachy and was struck by a fiery bolt from Perin’s hammer. Others say that he gave his eyes in return for being allowed to read the Book of Regret.”
A figure in a pale robe stepped forward out of the confusing shadows. The three beast-things retreated to swarm around it like a huntsman’s hounds, but these crouching, apish creatures were nothing like hounds.
Barrick drew himself up so that he could defend himself but the stranger only stood looking down at him with an expression that might have been bemusement. At first glance Barrick had thought the newcomer a man, but now he was not so certain: the stranger’s ears were an odd shape and set too low on his hairless skull, and the shape of his face was also unusual, with very high cheekbones, a long jaw, and a nose that was little more than a low bump above two slits.
“What are… ?” Barrick hesitated. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“I am Harsar, a servant. You are in the House of the People, of course.” The stranger was speaking—his lips even moved—but Barrick heard the voice in the bones of his head. “Was that not your destination?”
“I… I suppose it was. The king. The king told me to come here ...”
“Just so.” The stranger reached out a hand as cold and dry as a lizard’s claw and helped Barrick to his feet. The three creatures capered around him for a moment and then went scampering out the door into the blue-lit hallway beyond where they stood, crouched and waiting. Barrick looked at his surroundings for the first time and saw that he was in a room decorated with intense but somber intricacy, surrounded by a forest of striped columns, far too many for any mere structural purpose. Set into the otherwise featureless black stone floor beneath him, a great disk of some glowing pearlescent material provided the only light in the large chamber.