“Teodoros may praise you to the heavens,” said a voice behind her, “but don’t expect it from me.”
Briony turned to find Estir Makewell staring up at her, eyes red and hair draggled.
“Estir, I am so sorry…”
“Are you?” The woman seemed sunk into herself, but taut, like an animal poised to spring. “Truly? Then why didn’t you ask to pay your respects to Dowan when you first came back?”
“I meant to…”
“Of course.” Estir grabbed Briony’s arm hard enough that it felt like a kind of assault. “Come, then. Come and see him.”
“Estir ...” said Finn Teodoros in a warning tone.
“No, I’ll go,” Briony told him. “Of course I’ll go.”
She allowed the woman to drag her across the road and back a few steps toward the beginnings of the forest where they had been waylaid. The tall man’s body lay on the ground, his face and chest covered in one of the bright costume cloaks he had worn as the god Volios.
“Here,” said Estir. “This is what I have left of him.” She twitched back the covering, revealing Dowan’s long face, fish-belly pale. She had closed his eyes and tied his jaw shut with a length of cloth, but despite the soothing words people always said, the kind giant did not look anything like he was sleeping. He looked like a mere object now, broken and useless.
Like poor Kendrick, she thought. One moment the blood was making a blush in his cheeks, the next moment it was only a drying splash on the floor. We are nothing when the life is gone from us. Our bodies are nothing.
“Are you weeping? ” Estir demanded. “Are you weeping for my Dowan? You have some nerve, princess or not. You have the pride of the gods if you can weep for him when it was you who brought this on him.” She pointed at the giant’s awful, empty face. “Look at him! Look! He was all I had! He was going to marry me when we had a little money! Now he’s… he’s only ...” She swayed and then sank down to her knees, hitching and sobbing. “Kernios lead you s–safely and take you in, dear D–D–Dowan…”
Briony reached down to touch her shoulder; Estir knocked her hand away. “Don’t! The others can fawn over you but this was your fault! You never cared for us at all.”
“Estir,” said Finn as he hurried to Briony’s side, “you’re being foolish. The princess had nothing to do with this ...”
“She had everything to do with this,” Estir Makewell snapped. “But no one else will say anything to her because she’s a gods-cursed royal! What do I care? My lover is dead—the last chance I had! The last ...” She fell forward again, sobbing as she lay her head on the corpse’s chest. “Dowan… !”
“Come away, Princess,” said Finn. “None of the rest blame you.”
But Briony could not help noticing that none of the others had come to welcome her back, either—that Nevin Hewney and Pedder Makewell and the rest had watched from a distance, as though a spell had transformed her into something new and a little frightening.
“I will see that he has a good burial in Layandros,” she told Finn. Briony looked to where Prince Eneas waited with his men, deliberately staying at a distance so that she could have this reunion with what he supposed—what she herself had supposed—were her friends. “That’s the least I can do.”
“I say again, do not blame yourself, Princess. The roads are bad these days and we have spent much of our lives traveling. This might have happened whether we journeyed with you or not.”
“But you were traveling with me, Finn, and I didn’t give you any choice about it. Without me, Dowan could have stayed behind—could have gone off to tend a farm with Estir.”
“And caught the plague, or been gored by his own bull. I’m not certain I believe in the gods, but Fate is something else.” Finn shook his head. “Our deaths will find us, Princess—mine, yours, Estir Makewell’s—whether we hide from them or not. Dowan’s found him here, that’s all.”
She could not speak for a long moment. The weight of all she had lost and all she had failed to do felt as though it were pressing down on her so heavily she could barely breathe.
“Th–thank you,” she said at last. “You are a good man, Finn Teodoros. I regret involving any of you in my troubles.”
Now it was the playwright’s turn to fall silent, but it seemed a silence of consideration rather than emotion. “Come a little way aside with me before you leave us, Princess Briony,” he said at last.
They retreated back across the road until they stood a goodly distance from Eneas and his soldiers but still in sight, and far enough from the grieving Estir Makewell that Briony could breathe again.
“If there is something you want, ask me,” said Briony. “Dear Finn, you are one of the few people in this world who has done me nothing but kindness.” She could not forget the imperiousness she had shown him earlier—it made her wince to think of how she had threatened him with her rank. “You will be my historian, as I said, but I hope you’ll also still be my friend.”
For the first time since she had met him he seemed at a loss for words, but once again it seemed something other than raw feelings that kept him silent. At last he shook his head as if to throw off some nagging annoyance. “I must speak to you, Princess.”
“You puzzle me, Master Teodoros. Aren’t we speaking?”
“I mean in honesty. True honesty.” He swallowed. “You have suffered much for your people and risked even more, Highness. Listen to me now. Those whom you consider your friends and allies—well, some of them are not friends. Not at all.”
Dawet had said much the same to her on that day so long ago, back in Southmarch. That felt like another world. “What do you mean? I do not mean to mock you, but I can scarcely think of anyone who hasn’t betrayed my family’s trust—the Tollys, Hesper of Jellon, King Enander ...”
“No, I mean someone closer to you.” His usual air of amused cynicism was quite gone. “You know that I have long served Avin Brone, both as a scholar and as a spy.”
“Yes, and someday I will ask you to tell me what you can of those days, those tasks. Brone himself said that I was too trusting, that I needed to find my own spies and informants, but I confess I know little of the game ...”
Teodoros raised his hand, then thought better of displaying impatience to a princess. “Forgive me, Highness, but it is Brone himself I am talking about.”
It took a moment before she understood him. “Brone? Are you saying that Avin Brone is a traitor?”
His round face was full of pain. “This is difficult, my lady. Lord Brone has never been anything but just and fair with me, Highness, and neither has he ever said anything to me that suggested he was less than loyal to you… but he left me alone in his retiring room once, when one of his other spies was brought in unexpectedly from the South Road, wounded by an arrow ...”
“Rule. His name was Rule,” Briony said. “Merciful Zoria, I remember that night. I was there in Brone’s chambers.”
“And I was in a room nearby where the count does his business.” Finn glanced around to make sure they were still out of everyone’s earshot. “I am… I am a curious man, to tell you something that will not surprise you. By Zosim the Many-Faced, it is not my fault—I am a writer! I had never been left alone among Lord Brone’s things before, and… well, I must confess that I took the chance to look at some of his papers. Some of them were things I could not make much sense of—maps of places I didn’t know, lists of names—and others were simply reports about doings in Summerf ield, Hierosol, Jellon, and other places, obviously reports from his many spies. But at the bottom of a pile in his writing desk I found a vellum cover with the Eddon blazon upon it, but without a seal to keep it closed.”