“Which matters not, my lady. I am trying to make a point, here.” He leaned close, so that the thin blade of his knife was as near his face as hers. “You mistake men for moral creatures, as if each must measure up the good and bad done to him and then act accordingly, as though they were incorruptible judges weighing out a sentence.”
Briony did her best not to tense. “Oh, I know men are corruptible . . . and corrupted . . . never fear.”
She lashed out with her foot, hoping to surprise him. Instead, Dawet kept his hold on her wrists and hooked her leg with his, knocking her remaining foot from beneath her. Briony slid off the bench and would have fallen but Dawet held her up, so that she dangled between his hand and the bench like a deer carcass hung in front of a hunter’s lodge. Her shame and fury almost exceeded her fear. “Let me go!”
“As you wish, Lady.” He let go and she dropped the short distance to the ground.
Briony was up an instant later with her knife in her hand. “You! How dare you? How ...”
“How dare I what?” His expression was flat, almost cruel, which was just as well. If he had smiled at her she might have tried to kill him. “Show you what a fool you are being? You are a very clever girl, Briony Eddon, but you are still only that—a girl. A maiden, even, I do not doubt. Do you understand what you have risked of your own safety and your family’s fortunes coming here like this?”
The Yisti dagger wavered in her hand. “You . . . you do not mean to harm me?”
“By the Great Mother, Princess, do you think I am such a fool as to try to do injury to a white-skinned northern girl in a northern castle, within the hearing of a hundred armed guards or more, and not even put a hand over her mouth?” He shook his head. “Tell me I have not so far misestimated your intelligence, or you mine.”
“You had a knife to my throat!”
“If I truly meant you harm, I would have disarmed you.” He reached out, fast as Shaso himself had been, faster perhaps, and used his own blade to flip her dagger out of her hand. It spun into the darkness, disappearing into the shadowy garden border without a sound. “Now go find it. I will wait. That did not look the sort of knife anyone would like to lose.”
When she came back, she had hidden the Yisti dagger in her sleeve again. “If it weren’t for this wretched dress I would have had both knives out, and you would have had one of them in your shin, at the very least.”
He grinned, but there was no mirth in it. “Then let us both be glad you didn’t, for I feel pretty certain that things would not have gone so easily or happily as you suppose.”
“But why did you do that?” She sat down again, much more warily this time, but Dawet did not make any movement toward her. “You frightened me.”
“Good, my lady. That is the first thing I have heard since I met you here that makes me happy. I want you frightened. You are in terrible danger. Have you not realized that?”
She stared at him, doing her best to remember the lessons again, not of warcraft but of mummery. It would not do to let the tears well up. It would be altogether too . . . girlish. “Yes, Master dan-Faar, I have certainly realized that, most notably when someone tried to poison me three days gone, but I thank you for the reminder.”
“Your sarcasm serves you poorly, Princess. You should thank me in truth for being honest with you when others would not or cannot.” He reached out his hand and gently placed it on her arm. “In truth, I wish that were not my role. I would someone had given me a fairer, kinder part to play ...”
This time he did not anticipate her strike. She moved so quickly that the point of her blade pinked the fat of his hand before he could pull back. He stood up, anger clouding his face, and yanked off his glove to examine the wound. It was not, Briony thought, a very serious spite. “You little . . . ! Why did you do that?”
“You are the one who counseled mistrust, Master dan-Faar.” She was breathing hard and her heart was drumming. “You speak to me of how kind you are, how thoughtful, how you have my best interests in mind where no one else does. Very well. Start by answering this question, please—what are you? Are you an enemy with a soft spot toward me? Or a friend? Would you be my brother, or would you be a lover? I have spent my life at the center of public doings. I am not so flattered by your attention as to lose all sense of who I am and what I’m after, nor to forget that you seem to want to have things all ways at once.” She stared at him. “Well, sir, what would you be to me?”
For a moment Dawet simply stared at her over his hand as he sucked on the place where she had pinked him. “Princess, I do not know. In truth, I am not certain I know who you are anymore. Your time in exile has changed you.”
“Well, that should be no surprise, should it?” She once more tucked away her dagger. “If you decide you want to speak to me again—perhaps to give me some information I could truly use, like what you know of my father—you will know where to find me.”
“Wait.” Dawet lifted his hand to her as though conceding a wager. “Enough, Briony.”
“Princess Briony, Master dan-Faar. We do not know each other so well, nor have you proved your friendship yet.”
He drew back. “You are hard, Lady. Did I not warn you back in Southmarch that someone in your court meant you harm?”
“Come now. Without naming any names to me, what use was that? Of what ruler in all the world is that not true? You have not done me any unkindnesses, Envoy, but as far as I can see you have done me no services either, except to share the gift of your company.” She unbent enough to give him a half-smile. “A gift not without merit, but hardly the stuff of undying loyalty.”
He shook his head. “You have become a hard-shelled girl, Princess.”
“I have stayed a living woman when many wished it were otherwise. Now tell me of my father or let us say farewell and get out of this cold night.”
“There is nothing much to say. When I left Hierosol to come here he was still Ludis Drakava’s prisoner. Since then I have heard the same rumors as you—that Ludis has fled, that your father has been given to the autarch, that Hierosol will fall at any moment ...”
“What? Given to . . . to the autarch? I have never heard . . . oh, Merciful Zoria, say it is not true! What madness is this?”
“But . . . surely you have heard the tale. Many people here in Tessis are repeating it—Ludis traded him for his own escape, it’s said. But do not fear too much, lady, it is only rumor so far. Nothing is known for certain ...”
She hissed her anger. “Blood of the Brothers! Not one of these cursed Syannese has spoken a word of it to me!” She reached out and plucked a blossom from the branch near her head and held it for a moment. No tears, she reminded herself. She crushed it in her fingers and let the petals fall. “Tell me everything you have heard.” The tears had ebbed without ever reaching her eyes. She felt a cold hardness in her breast, as though ice grew on her heart.
“As I said, Lady, these are only tales, much confused and . . .”
“Do not soothe me, dan-Faar. I am no longer a child. Just . . . inform me.” She took a breath. The night seemed to bend close; the chilly darkness inside her rose to greet it. “I may have lost my family’s throne but I will take it back, that I swear, and our enemies will suffer for what they’ve done. Yes, I promise that on the heads of the gods themselves.” She looked up at Dawet’s surprised face, just visible in the light from an open window above. “You are staring, man. Put the time to better use. Tell me what I wish to know.”
12
A Good Woman, a Good Man, and a Poet
“It is said that a single king and queen have ruled the fairies since the days of the gods, an immortal pair who are known by many names, but most often called Eenur and Sakuri according to Rhantys, who was reputed to have friends among the Qar. Some stories even claim that these immortal rulers are brother and sister, like the monarchs of old Xis.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
MATT TINWRIGHT HAD BEEN SEARCHI
NG the inner and outer keeps for her a tennight or more, using almost every free moment when he was not at the court or tending Elan’s slow recovery, so it was disappointing that he found her at last only a short way from his hired room near Skimmer’s Lagoon in the outer ward. She had apparently gained a bit of a name for herself among those exiled from the mainland city, refugees who now lived in the most miserable conditions, crammed together in the besieged castle.
When he first saw his mother he did not immediately approach her, but instead followed the tall, bony woman as she walked down Staple Street from shop to dingy shop with a basket in her hand, apparently collecting food for the less fortunate. His mother, Tinwright thought grimly, never had any difficulty finding those she deemed less fortunate than herself. She could scent them like a hunting hound scents its quarry.
Still, he could not help noticing that despite the unarguable rectitude of her cause, she pocketed every fourth or fifth piece of food, loaf of stale bread, or whiskery onion, apparently for herself. She might insist on helping the less fortunate, even when they did not want her assistance, but Anamesiya Tinwright had always been just as firmly determined to help herself.
He approached her at last near the great temple in Market Square where she was shoving bits of food into the hands of the displaced folk living there in a sad camp of tents made from sticks and threadbare blankets. Watching her quick movements and her prominent, sharp nose, Tinwright could not help remembering what his father had called her in one of his less charitable moments—“that damned interfering woodpecker.”
“If it does hurt your teeth,” she was telling an old man as he walked up, “that is your own doing, not my good bread I give you for nothing.”
“Mother?” said Tinwright.
She turned and looked at him. Her bony hand leaped to her breast and the wooden, almond-shaped Zorian vesicle she wore on a cord around her neck. “By the Trigon, what is this? By the blessed Brothers, is that you, Matthias?” She looked him up and down. “Your jacket is good, but it is dirty, I see. ‘Let not your raiment be tattered and oiled,’ as the sacred book says. Have they chased you out of the court, then?”
He felt himself flushing with anger and frustration. “It’s ‘tattered and soiled,’ not ‘tattered and oiled.’ No, Mother, I am very well liked at the court. Kind greetings to you, too. I am glad to see you well.”
She waved her hand toward the half dozen or so men and women crowding around her, all as tattered and soiled as could be. “The gods give me health because I give my best to others.” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the nearest old man. “Chew your food, you,” she said sternly. “Do not bolt it down and then hope to cozen me out of more.”
“Where are you living, Mother?”
“The gods provide for me,” she said airily, which likely meant that she was sleeping where she could, as were so many other refugees from the mainland in this crowded, stinking city within a city. “Why? Do you come to offer me a bedchamber in the palace? Have you grown ashamed of offending the gods with drink and fornication and hope to climb back into their good graces by extending a little charity to the woman who bore you?”
Tinwright took a breath before answering. “You have always been fascinated with the idea of my drinking and fornicating. I wonder if it’s entirely fitting for a mother to talk about such things so often.”
He had the pleasure now of seeing her flush. “You are a wicked child—you always were! I speak only to point out your errors, with no thought for my own good. Of course it means I am always scorned, first by your father, now by you, but I will not hide when I know the gods’ will is not being done.”
“What is the gods’ will, then, Mother?” Tinwright was close to walking away despite the desperation of his need. He should never have come near her. “Tell me, please.”
“It is plain. It is time for you to give up this wasteful life you lead, Matthias. Wine and women and poetry—none of it pleases the gods. Work, boy—real, sober work—that is what you need. The sacred book tells us, ‘He who does not work will have his eyes emptied.’ ”
Tinwright sighed. The sacred book was, of course, the Book of the Trigon, but his mother seemed to have access to a version no one else had ever seen. He was reasonably certain that the original injunction was “He who will not look will have his eyes opened,” but it was useless to argue with her about such things. “May the gods testify, Mother, I did not intend that we should fight. Let us start our talk again. I came to tell you that I have a place for you to stay. It is not in the palace, but it is clean and wholesome.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Truly? You would become a good son at last?”
He clenched his teeth. “I suppose, Mother. May we go so I can show you the place?”
“When I’ve finished here. A dutiful child will not mind waiting.”
It was small wonder that none of her children had stayed long at home, Tinwright thought. He leaned against a column and watched as she finished doling out the rest of her hard bread and stern admonishments to the waiting poor.
The smile that had started to form on his mother’s face when she saw the clean, well-appointed room suddenly went stiff as a dried fish when she spotted the sleeping girl. Her jaw dropped. “By the Sacred Brothers!” She made the sign of the Three on her breast so vigorously it might have been meant to protect her from a hurtling spear. “O my Heavenly Fathers and Mothers, defend me! What is this? What is this?”
“This is Lady Elan M’Cory, Mother . . .” he began, but Anamesiya Tinwright was already trying to force her way past him, back out the door.
“I’ll have nothing to do with this!” she said. “I am a godly woman!”
“And so is she!” Tinwright tried to catch at her arm and received a backhand smack from one of his mother’s large hands as she struggled to get away. “Blast and curse it, Mother, will you stop and listen to me!”
“I’ll not share a roof with your doxy!” she screeched, still heaving against his restraining grip. Some of the passers by had stopped to watch this interesting show; other neighbors were looking down from upstairs windows. Tinwright blasphemed under his breath.
“Just come inside. Let me explain. For the love of all the gods, Mother, will you stop?”
She gave him a look of fury, her face deathly pale but for pink spots in her cheeks. “I will not help you kill this girl’s baby, you fornicator! I know the folk of that court, with their wicked ways. Your father read books to you when you were young, no matter my warnings—I knew it would spoil you! I knew you would get airs above your station!”
“Gods curse and blast this whole muddle, Mother, you will be quiet and listen! ” He dragged her back inside and closed the door, then leaned against it to keep her from escaping. “This girl is blameless and so am I—well, I have done nothing to her, anyway. There is no baby. Do you understand? There is no baby!”
She looked at him with astonishment. “What, have you done your foul deed already, killed one of the gods’ innocents, and now you wish me to nurse her through it?”
He hung his head, praying for patience, although he was a bit uncertain as to who might be the best recipient for the request. Zosim, his own patron godling, was notoriously uninterested in that particular virtue, or in fact by virtue in general. In the end, Tinwright offered his prayer to the goddess Zoria, who was reputed to be good with things like this.
If she will even hear me, now that I have so long delayed her poem. But how could he help it when his muse, Princess Briony, Zoria’s earthly avatar, had disappeared? That was the beginning of my downfall. But I was raised up such a short time only! Zoria, surely I deserve a little pity?
Whether it was the goddess’ doing or not, after a moment he did feel a little calmer. Elan was beginning to stir as if she swam upward from great depths, her eyes still closed, her pale face troubled and confused.
“Listen carefully, Mother. I have rescued Lady Elan from someone who means her harm.” He didn’t dare tell her th
at the man he had saved her from was Hendon Tolly, the castle’s self-appointed protector: his mother had a deep and unreasoning reverence for all kinds of authority and might march straight out and denounce them both. “She is sick because I had to give her a medicine to spirit her out of the palace and away from this man’s clutches. She has done nothing wrong, do you understand? She is a victim—like Zoria, do you see? Like Blessed Zoria herself, driven out into the snows, alone and friendless.”
His mother looked from him to Elan with deep suspicion. “How can I believe that? How can I be certain you are not making a fool of me? ‘The gods help those who fill their own fields,’ as the book says.”
“Till. Till their own fields. But if you don’t believe me, you can ask her yourself, when she awakes.” He pointed toward the corner of the room and the tiny table set by. “There is a basin and cloth. She needs bathing, and . . . and it didn’t seem proper I should do it. I will bring back some food for both of you, as well as some more blankets from the palace.”
The idea of blankets from the palace clearly intrigued her, but his mother was not going to be convinced so easily. “But how long must I stay? Where will I sleep?”
“You can sleep in the bed, of course.” He had opened the door and he was partway out already. “It is a big bed. Very nice, too. The mattress is full of soft, clean, new straw.” He took another step back. He was almost out. Almost . . .
“It will cost you a starfish,” she said. “Every week.”
“What?” Outrage boiled up in him. “A silver starfish? What sort of mother tries to pickpurse her own son?”
“Why should I work without wage? If you do not wish to help me, your own blood, you can hire some girl from one of those taverns in which you’ve always spent your time.”