by Tad Williams
“I’m sorry, my old darling. I’m sorry.” He heard himself saying it, regretted it even as the words left his mouth. “Don’t worry, I . . . I won’t let anyone take him from you.”
*
“Isn’t there any other way?” she asked. They had lit one of the smallest lamps; her face was red and her eyes swollen. “It seems a terrible thing to do—it seems wrong.”
“We are parents now,” Chert said. “I suspect we must get used to feeling terrible about some things we must do. I suspect it is the tunnel-toll for having a child.”
“That’s just like you,” she whispered, half angry, half not. “Anything you take up, you decide you know all about it. Just like with those racing moles.”
The sleeping boy, who as usual had kicked his blanket off, was lying belly-down, face turned to the side like a swimmer taking a breath, pale hair white as frost. Chert stared with a mixture of fondness and fear. He knew he had just signed a treaty of sorts, that in return for getting a look at the contents of the sack he had as good as promised that whatever they might be, he would abide by Opal’s judgment. And he knew in his heart that unless they found evidence that the child had actually committed murder—and not just any old murder, but something important and recent— she would not consider it grounds to send the boy away.
How did that happen so quickly? Chert wondered. Are all women like that— ready to love a child, any child, just as a hand is ready to grasp or an eye ready to see? Why don’t I feel the same way? Because although he knew he truly did care for the child, there was nothing in him like the fierce possessiveness that his wife felt, the almost helpless need. Does she burn too hot? Or is my heart too cold?
Still, watching as the boy moaned a little and shifted, looking at the helpless, smoothly vulnerable neck, the open mouth, he found himself hoping that they discovered nothing damning.
Someone is using this child. Chert suddenly felt certain of this, but did not know why he thought so or what it meant. For good or for ill, there is another will behind him. But what is he? A weapon? A messenger? An observer?
Confused by these thoughts, Chert got down on his knees and carefully slid one hand under the shirt the boy used as a cushion. His fingers touched something solid, but Flint’s head rested firmly on top of it; he would rouse the boy if he tried to pull it free. He put a hand under the child’s shoulder and gently pushed.
“You’ll wake him up . . . !” Opal whispered.
Would that be so bad? Chert wondered. There was no reason they needed to hide what they were doing, surely. In fact, he would have gladly waited until morning, except that he knew he would not sleep if he did Still, as the boy yawned and rolled onto his side, allowing Chert to pull the sack and its cord out from under the rolled shirt, he did feel more than a little like a thief.
At least he hasn’t hidden it, Chert thought. Tliat’s a good sign, isn’t it? If he knew it was something bad, he would hide it, wouldn’t he . . . ?
Chert carried it out of their bedchamber to the table, Opal as close behind him as if it were not simply a possession of Flint’s but an actual piece of the boy. Chert had been distracted last time by the discovery of the strange stone, the one that he had passed to Chaven. Now he examined the bag all over again. It was the size of a hen’s egg but almost flat, only as thick as a finger. The needlework was exquisite and complex, in many colors of thread, but the design was a pattern, not a picture, and told him very little. “Have you ever seen work like that?”
Opal shook her head. “Some eyestitch from Connord I saw in the market once, but that was much simpler.”
Chert took it gently in his hands, prodded at it with his finger. It gave beneath his touch with a faint, springy crunch, but there was something hard at the middle of it, hard like bone. “Where’s my knife?”
“That clumsy thing?” Opal was already walking across the room toward her sewing box. “If you’re going to steal the boy’s possessions and cut them open, you don’t have to do it like some butcher’s prentice.” She returned and lifted out a tiny blade with a handle of polished maker’s-pearl. “Use this. No, I’ve changed my mind. Give it back. I’ll be the one who has to sew the thing up again after you’ve finished poking around in it.”
Assuming it’s something that can be put back in a sack as though nothing has happened, Chert thought but didn’t say. The boy himself certainly hadn’t been like that, so why should this be different?
Opal carefully sliced away a few of the threads down one side, where the ornamental stitchery was minimal. Chert had to admit that he wouldn’t have thought of that, that he would have opened the top and spoiled much more of the embroidery.
“What if. . . what if the stitchery itself is some kind of shadow-magic?” he said suddenly. “What if we’ve spoiled it by cutting it, and whatever’s inside won’t be held in there anymore?” He didn’t know exactly what he was he trying to say but in these deep hours of the night it was hard not to feel they were trespassing on unfamiliar and perhaps hostile ground.
Opal gave him a sour look. “That’s just like you to think of that after I’ve started.” But she paused, and suddenly her face was worried. “Do you think there’s something alive in here? Something that . . . that bites?”
“Give it to me, then,” Chert said, trying to make a joke of it. “If someone has to lose a finger, it shouldn’t be the one who’s going to sew the thing up again.”
He squeezed it a little to force the snipped seam open, held it up to the light. All he could see was something that looked like bits of dried flowers and leaves. He leaned forward and sniffed it cautiously. The scent was exotic and unrecognizable, a mix of spicy odors. He probed inside with his finger, trying to be gentle, but he was crushing the dried plant material and the smell was getting stronger. At last he touched something hard and flat. He tried to pull it out, but it was almost the same size as the sack.
“You’ll have to cut more threads,” he said, handing it back to Opal.
She sniffed the open side. “Moly and bleeding-heart. But that’s not all. I don’t recognize the rest.” When she had widened the gap all the way down to the bottom and even a little beyond, Chert took it back.
He pulled, gently. Dried petals fell to the table. He pulled again and at last the object slid out. It was an oval of polished white—a quick glance told him it was made not of stone but something more recently and aggressively animated—which had been carved in a decorative manner that, like the embroidery, was not meant to represent anything obvious. For a moment he could only stare at it in surprise—why would anyone spend so much care carving and polishing a simple round of ivory or bone like this?—but Opal took it for a moment, nodded, then put it back on his palm, this time with the other side facing up.
“It’s a mirror, you old fool.” There was relief in her voice. “A hand mirror like a highborn lady might have. I daresay your Princess Briony owns a few of these.”
“My Princess Briony?” He fell into their old rhythms because it was the easiest thing to do; he, too, was relieved, although not as completely as his wife. “She’ll be very entertained to hear that, I’m sure.” He stared at the mirror, lifted it up, turned it until it caught the reflection of the lamp. It did seem quite ordinary. “But why does the boy have a mirror?”
“Oh, can’t you see?” Opal shook her head at his obtuseness. “It is as clear as skyglass.This must have belonged to his . . . his true mother.” She did not like saying the words, but she continued bravely. “She likely gave it to him as . . . a sort of reminder. Perhaps she was in danger and they had only a few moments before she had to send him away. She wanted whoever found him to know that he came of a good family, that his mother had loved him.”
“It seems strange,” Chert said, unable to hide his disbelief completely, “that a woman would keep her mirror sewed up so tightly in a bag.”
“She wouldn’t! She sewed it up so that he wouldn’t lose it.”
“So you’re saying that a noblewoman
with only moments left to spend with her little son—perhaps with her castle under siege and on fire, like in one of those big-folk ballads that you like to listen to when we go to the market upground—took the time to sew this bag shut with these careful little stitches?"
“You’re just trying to make trouble about it.” Opal sounded amused, not irritated. She could afford to be magnanimous, since she had obviously won the day. It was only a mirror, not a ring with a family crest or a letter detailing Flint’s heritage or confessing a dreadful crime Just to make sure, Chert pulled the rest of the dried leaves and flowers out onto the tabletop while Opal made little tutting sounds, but there was nothing else in the sack.
“If you are quite finished making a mess, give all that to me.” The glow of triumph was unmistakable now. “I have a lot of work to do to make that right again before the boy wakes up. You might as well go back to bed, old man.”
And he did. But he still did not sleep, although it was not the quiet sounds Opal made as she plied her needle that kept Chert awake. What was in the sack had not turned out to be something terrible. Nothing would change, at least not for the moment. But that was part of the problem.
I will tell Chaven about it when next I get the chance. He was tired, so tired, and desperate for sleep. He was even more desperate to believe that Opal was right, that there was nothing to worry about, but something still nagged at him. Yes, Chaven, if he’ll see me. He didn’t seem very pleased with my company the last time. But there is no one else to ask. Yes, Chaven is versed in such things. Perhaps he can tell me what it might signify—whether a mirror could be anything more than simply a mirror.
*
Briony had been carrying it for hours, looking at the familiar handwriting again and again, as though it were her father’s actual face and not merely words he had written. She had not realized how much she missed him until she had read it, and in reading it she had heard his dear voice speaking to her as though he were in the room with her instead of hundreds of miles away and half a year gone. Could such a homely, intimate thing have possibly been the cause of Kendrick’s murder?
But for an object so freighted with family sorrow, its meaning was somewhat opaque. It did speak of the Autarch, as Brone had said, and of King Olin’s concerns about the southern conqueror.
“Here we come to the meat of your father’s concern, Kendrick, my son,”
she read for the sixth or seventh time,
“which is that all the talk of the Autarch’s spreading empire that has come north to us is not exaggerated. All the continent of Xand above the great White Desert has fallen under the sway of Xis, and while his father and grandfather were content merely to conquer and exact tribute, this newest Autarch is not a gentle ruler to these subjects. It is said that he considers himself not just king but god, and that all these subject lands must worship him as the true child of the sun itself—yes, the sun that shines in the sky! He has not yet pressed such harsh demands on our cities and states of Eion that have fallen to his influence, but I cannot doubt he will want the same from them when his grip has become adequately tight.
“Do not think, however, that because he is mad he is also foolish. This Autarch was forged of hot metal indeed. He was born Sulepis, third youngest of twenty-six brothers in the royal family of Xis—a nest of vipers that became legendary even in troubled Xis, which has never had any shortage of savagery and murder among its ruling clans. The stories say that only one of his brothers, the youngest of the family, was still alive when Sulepis finally ascended to the throne a year after their father’s death. After this younger brother set the crown on Sulepis’head at the coronation, the poor wretch was taken away and dipped into molten bronze. After the tortured figure cooled, the Autarch had it set in front of the royal palace. A traveler told me that the Autarch likes to tell horrified visitors this ornament is meant to represent. The Importance of Family.
“His grip on Xand is nearly complete, but although he has made conquests in Eion, they are all small states with poor harbors or no harbor at all. He knows that none of them will provide him a suitable base for an invasion, and that without a secure foothold his conscripted army, no matter how large, will not defeat determined men fighting for their own lands, especially if Syan and Jellon and the March Kingdoms stand together . . .”
*
Briony put the letter down, as angry as the first time she read it. Jellon— that swamp of treachery! How like her father, to continue to believe even as he languished in prison because of Jellon’s greed, that he could convince that pig King Hesper to do the right thing, to make common cause against a greater enemy.
And he probably will convince him, given enough time, Briony thought. Then what will I do? What if we do make common cause and they send that oily Count Angelos back here, and I must treat him as an ally instead of sticking my sword in his heart as I would rather? She promised herself she would go to the armory this afternoon and practice with the blade for a while. If Barrick still felt too ill to trade blows, she could always spend an hour pretending that the sawdust-stuffed dummy was Angelos or his master Hesper. It would be good to hit something.
As for the letter’s missing section, she couldn’t guess what might have drawn someone to steal it. From what she could make of the beginning and the end, it seemed only to have been a general and workaday conversation about maintaining the castle walls and gates. Could some spy of the Autarch’s, or some nearer enemy, have taken it because they thought Olin might mention some weakness in Southmarch’s defenses? How could they think her father would be foolish enough to trust information that might endanger his family and home to the hands of Ludis Drakava’s envoy? They didn’t know him. As Brone had said, Olin Eddon was a man who took nothing for granted.
She skipped down to the bottom of the letter, although she knew it would make her cry again to read his farewell.
“And give my best love to Briony, too, tell her that I am sorry I am detained and cannot be there for the birthday she and Barrick share. There is a cat here in this rather drafty old castle who has taken to sleeping at the foot of my bed, and by the way she has grown stout, I suspect soon she will become a mother. Tell Briony that not only will I come back to my family presently, I will bring with me a small surprise, and that she may spoil it all she likes, because unlike dogs or most children, a cat cannot be ruined by too much affection.”
She was pleased with herself. She didn’t cry. Or at least, only a few drops, and they were easily wiped away before Rose or Moina returned.
*
Despite his useless arm, Barrick’s greater strength ordinarily made him more than her equal at swordplay, but her brother was still feeling the effects of his illness: his face quickly grew flushed, and before very long he was breathing harshly. Slower than usual, he took several blows to the body from Briony’s padded sword and managed to touch her only once in return. After a much shorter span than Briony would have liked, he stepped away and threw his falchion down with a muffled clatter.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “You know I’m not well enough yet.”
“All the more reason to build up your strength again. Come on, gloomy, let’s try just once more. You can use a shield this time if you want.”
“No. You’re as bad as Shaso. Now that he’s not here to plague me, do you think I’m going to let you take his place?”
There was something more than ordinary anger in his tone, and Briony fought down her own resentment. She was resdess, full of fury and unhap-piness like storm clouds. All she wanted after days of sitting and listening to people talk at her was to move her limbs, to swing the sword, to be something other than a princess, but she knew trying to force Barrick to do anything was useless. “Very well. Perhaps we should talk instead. I read Father’s letter again.”
“I don’t want to talk. Perin’s Hammer, Briony, I’ve done enough talking lately! Plots and intrigues. It makes me weary. I’m going to go have a nap.”
“But we’ve hardly
spoken about all the things Brone told us—about Gailon Tolly, and the letter, and the Autarch . . .”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Brone is a troublemaker. If there is no intrigue, no mysterious plots to protect us from, he has no influence.” Barrick scarcely untied his chest padding before yanking it off, peevish as a child sent away from the supper table.
“Are you saying we have nothing to worry about? When our brother was murdered under our own roof. . . ?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying! Don’t twist my words! I said that I don’t trust Avin Brone to tell us any truth that doesn’t do himself benefit. Don’t forget, he’s the one who convinced our father to marry Anissa. Nynor and Aunt Merolanna argued against it, but Brone would not let go until he convinced Father to do it.”