“His Majesty,” echoed the others, and drank up. Enander looked surprised but not unhappy. Ananka was hiding her irritation well.
Briony considered it a victory on both counts.
After Briony had sent her maids away, she took out the note and studied it for the fifth or sixth time since she had received it the night before.
Come to the garden in the Vane Courtyard an hour after sunset on Stonesday.
It had been sitting on her writing desk when she returned, a homely piece of twine around it instead of a wax seal. She did not recognize the handwriting but she had a good idea who had left it for her. Just to be on the safe side, though, she went to her chest and lifted out the boy’s clothes she had worn while traveling with Makewell’s Men. She had sent them to be cleaned, then packed them away—there was no telling when she might need them again. Even this, perhaps the greatest palace in Eion, felt like poor and unsafe shelter after the events of the last year.
Underneath the homespun garments was the sack with her Yisti knives. She rucked up her long skirts, not without a great deal of puffing and gasping as she bent across the whalebone stomacher, and was about to strap the smaller knife to her leg when she realized the foolishness of what she was doing.
What, shall I ask an enemy to wait while I roll around on the ground trying to reach past my petticoats for my dagger? What had Shaso said? “Examine your clothes… find places you can keep them and draw them without snagging.” What would he have thought of her struggling red-faced to reach her leg?
She gave up and stood. She pulled on her mantle, then slipped the smaller of the two blades into her sleeve just as somebody knocked on her chamber door. Briony waited for a moment before remembering the maids were gone, Feival was out collecting gossip in the servants’ hall, and she was alone. “Who’s there?” she called.
“Just me, Princess.”
She opened it but did not step aside to let her friend in. “Gods keep you, Ivvie. I don’t think I’m going down to dinner.”
Ivgenia looked at her clothes. “Are you going out, Snowbear?” The name was a little joke—her friend liked to pretend Briony came from the far, frozen north.
“No, no, I’m just cold.” It was hard to lie to someone she thought of as a friend, but she could not bring herself to trust anyone in the court, even sweet, kindly Ivgenia e’Doursos. “I’m not feeling well, dear—just a little chill on my heart tonight. Please give the king and Lady Ananka my best wishes.”
When Ivgenia was gone Briony found her shoes and slipped into them. It had been a dry week, which was good—it made the prospect of waiting out of doors more appealing. Still, as she walked quietly down the corridor she was already netted with gooseflesh.
The Vane Courtyard was named for an immense weathervane in the shape of Perin’s flying horse. It stood atop a tall tower at one end of the courtyard, a monument that could be seen halfway across Tessis and was often used as the reference point in local directions. On the far side of the highest courtyard wall ran the Lantern Broad itself, the massive, ancient street that gave Broadhall Palace its name: Briony could hear the lowing of oxen, the scrape and thunk of cartwheels, and the shouts of peddlers. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to walk out of the palace and into that great street and simply follow where it led her—find a life that had nothing to do with courtly connivance or family responsibility, a life without monsters, fairies, traitors, or poisoners. If only she could…
“Hello, Lady,” said a deep voice beside her ear.
Before the second syllable was finished she had whirled and snugged her knife against his throat.
“I gather you are not pleased to see me,” said Dawet dan-Faar, his voice only a little thickened by the blade pushing against his gorge. “I am not certain why, Princess Briony, but I will be happy to apologize directly you remove your pretty blade from my windpipe.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?” She lowered the knife and backed a step away. She had forgotten the smell of his skin and the quiet rumble of his voice and she did not like the way those things made her feel. “Sneaking into my rooms to leave a note? You men, you are all boys when it comes to it, playing at games of war and spycraft even when you do not need to.”
“Games?” He raised an eyebrow. “I think what happened to you and your family shows that these are not merely games. Lives are at stake.”
“Why? Because of other men.” She slipped the knife back into her sleeve. “What will happen to you if you are caught here, Master dan-Faar?”
“In truth? Nothing that cannot be fixed, but I would prefer not to have to set my energies to such repairs if I can avoid it.”
“Then let’s go sit on the bench beneath that apple tree. It is mostly out of sight from the colonnades.” She led him toward the bench and swept her skirts carefully to the side so she could sit down. She patted the wood a decorous distance away. “Here, sit. Tell me what has happened to you since I’ve seen you last. We had no time to talk at the inn.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The False Woman, with its grubby little proprietor. That was an unpleasant afternoon—they almost had me.”
“Oh, stop.” Briony shook her head. “I told you, these games bore me. Do you truly expect me to believe you escaped all on your own?”
He looked more than a little startled. “What do you mean, Princess?”
“Really, Master dan-Faar. What was it you said to the guard captain? ‘I swear by Zosim Salamandros, you have the wrong man!’ What, swearing by the Trickster god himself as a pass code and you think I could not guess? And then that… charade of an escape, conveniently out of everyone’s sight? After spending months with a troupe of players, did you think I would not recognize sham and playacting? The guard captain let you go.”
A smile tugged at the edge of Dawet’s mouth, just visible in the torchlight. “I am… speechless,” he said at last.
“I can even guess with whom you made that arrangement,” she said. “Lord Jino, the king’s spymaster—would it by any chance be him? No, you need not answer. The only real questions, Master dan-Faar, would be about your true relationship with the Syannese court. Secret envoy from Ludis Drakava in Hierosol? Or a double agent working originally for King Enander, but pretending to serve Drakava?”
“I am impressed, my lady,” said Dawet. “You have been thinking, I see, and thinking carefully and well… but I am afraid you are not yet the mistress of intrigue you think yourself to be.”
“Oh?” The air was growing cold now that the night had come on. She tucked her hands inside her sleeves. “And what have I missed?”
“You are assuming that I am your friend and not your enemy.”
A moment later Dawet had clutched her two wrists through the sleeve and prisoned them together in the firm grip of a single hand. In the other hand he held a knife, longer and more slender than Briony’s as he laid the blade gently against her cheek.
“You dastard! You… you traitor! I trusted you!”
“Exactly, my lady. You trusted me… but why? Because I admired you? Because my leg looks shapely in woolen hose? Yet I was your father’s captor’s man when you met me—poor grounds for friendship.”