by Tad Williams
She frowned. “We were so young—I scarcely remember it.”
“I do. I remember it all. It’s his fault we’re saddled with that madwoman.”
“Madwoman?” Briony didn’t like the look on her twin’s face—an edge of savagery she was not used to seeing. “Barrick, I don’t like her either, but that is a cruel thing to say and it’s not true.”
“Really? Selia says she is acting very strangely. That she allows no one to visit her except women from the countryside. Selia says that she has heard several of them have the name of witches in the city . . .”
“Selia? I didn’t know you had seen her again.”
His high color, which had begun to subside, suddenly came flooding back. “What if I have? It is any business of yours?”
“No, Barrick, it isn’t. But aren’t there other girls more worthy of your interest? We know nothing about her.”
He snorted. “You sound just like Auntie Merolanna.”
“Rose and Moina both admire you.”
“That’s a lie. Rose calls me Prince Never-Happy, says that I always complain.You told me.” He scowled.
She kept her face sober, although for the first time since the conversation began she was tempted to smile. “That was a year ago, silly. She doesn’t say it anymore. In fact, she was very worried about you when you were ill. And Moina . . . well, I think she fancies you.”
For a moment something like honest wonder came over his face, coupled with a look of yearning so powerful Briony was almost shocked. But an instant later it was gone, and he had put on the mask she knew far too well.
“Oh, no, it’s not enough for you that you’re the princess regent. You act like you wish you were the queen—like I wasn’t even around to interfere with things. Now you want to tell me who I can and can’t talk to, and maybe even set one of your ladies on me to pretend she likes me so that she can keep an eye on me. But you can’t, Briony.” He turned, dropping the rest of his practice gear, and walked out of the armory. Two of the guards who had been standing discreetly along the back wall followed him out.
“That’s not true!” she called. “Oh, Barrick, that’s not true . . . !” But he was already gone.
She didn’t really know why she had come. She felt as though she were walking through a high wind and trying to hold together some fantastically complex and delicate thing, like one of Chaven’s scientific instruments but a hundred times larger and more fragile. There were moments when it seemed to her that the entire family was under a curse.
The heavyset guard would not open the door to the cell. She argued, but even though she was the princess regent and could do what she liked, it was clear that if she insisted on her sovereignty the guard would go straight to Avin Brone and she didn’t want the lord constable to know she had come. She didn’t really understand this herself, and couldn’t imagine trying to explain to the dour and practical Brone.
In the end she stood at the cell door’s barred window and called him. At first there was no reply. She called again and heard a stirring, a dull clink of iron chains.
“Briony?” His voice had only a shadow of its old strength. She leaned forward, trying to see him in the shadows of the far wall. “What do you want?”
“To talk.” The stink of the place was terrible. “To . . . ask you a question.”
Shaso rose, the darkness moving upon itself as though the shadows had by magic taken human form. He walked forward slowly, dragging behind him the chain that bound his ankles, and stopped a little way from the door. There was no light in his stronghold cell: only the torch that burned on the wall behind her illumined his face, but it was enough for her to see how thin he had become, the shoulders still wide but the long neck almost fragile now. When he twisted his head so that he could better see her—she must be only a silhouette in front of the torch, she realized—she could make out the shape of his skull beneath the skm. “Merciful Zoria,” she murmured.
“What do you want?”
“Why won’t you tell me what happened?” She fought to keep her voice even. It was bad enough to weep in the privacy of her chamber. She would not cry in front of this stern old man or the guard who stood only a few yards away, pretending not to listen. “That night? I want to believe you.”
“You must find it lonely.”
“I am not the only one. Dawet does not believe you would kill Kendrick.”
For long moments he did not answer. “You spoke to him? About me?”
Briony couldn’t tell if he was stunned or enraged. “He was the envoy of our father’s kidnapper. He was also someone who might have been the murderer. We spoke many times.”
“You say ‘was.’ ”
“He’s gone. Back to Hierosol, back to his master, Drakava. But he told me that he thought you were too honorable to have broken your oath to the Eddon family, no matter what the appearance.”
“He is a liar and a murderer, of course .” The words came cold and heavy. “You can trust nothing he says.”
She was righting a losing battle to keep anger out of her own voice. “Even when he proclaims a belief in your innocence?”
“If my innocence hinges on that man’s word, then I deserve to go to the headsman.”
She struck the door so hard with the flat of her hand that the guard jumped in surprise and took a few hurried steps toward her. She angrily waved him away. “Curse you, Shaso dan-Heza, and curse your stiff neck! Do you enjoy this? Do you sit here in the dark and rejoice that now we have finally shown how little we truly appreciated you, gloat over how poorly we have repaid all your services over the years?” She leaned forward, almost hissed the words through the barred window. “I still find it hard to believe that you would kill my brother, but I begin to think that you would allow yourself to be killed—that you would murder yourself, as it were—out of pure spite.”
Again Shaso fell silent, his great head sagging to his chest. He did not speak for so long that Briony began to wonder if, worn down by the rigors of confinement, he had somehow fallen asleep standing up, or had even died on his feet as the poems claimed the great knight Silas of Perikal did, refusing to fall even with a dozen arrows in his body.
“I can tell you nothing about that night except that I did not kill Kendrick,” Shaso said at last. His voice was weirdly ragged, as though he fought back tears, but Briony knew there was nothing in the world more unlikely. “So I must die. If you truly do wish me any kindness, Princess— Briony—then you will not come to see me again. It is too painful.”
“Shaso, what . . . ?”
“Please. If you indeed are the single lonely creature in this land who thinks I have not betrayed my oath, then I will tell you three more things. Do not trust Avin Brone—he is a meddler and there is no cause as dear to him as his own. And do not trust Chaven, the court physician. He has many secrets and not all of them are harmless.”
“Chaven . . . ? But why him—what has he . . . ?”
“Please.” Shaso lifted his head. His eyes were fierce. “Just listen. I can give you no proof of any of these things, but . . . but I would not see you harmed, Briony. Nor your brother, for all he has tried my patience. And I would not see your father’s kingdom stolen from him.”
She was more than a little stunned. “You said . . . three things.”
“Do not trust your cousin, Gailon Tolly.” He groaned. It was a sudden, weird, and terrible sound. “No. That is all I can say.”
“Gailon.” She hesitated—almost she wanted to tell him the news of Gailon’s disappearance, and more important, of Brone’s assertion that the Tollys had hosted agents of the Autarch, but she was suddenly confused. Shaso said that neither Brone nor Gailon were to be trusted, so then which one was the betrayer, the Duke of Summerfield or the lord constable? Or was it both?
Tell him? Am I going mad? The thought was like a splash of icy water, sudden and shocking. This man may have killed my brother, whatever I wish to believe. He could be the arch-traitor himself, or in the employ of s
omeone even more dangerous like the Autarch of Xis. It’s bad enough I have come down here by myself, without Barrick—should I treat him as though he were still a trusted family counselor?
“Briony?” Shaso’s voice was faint, but he sounded concerned.
“I must go.” She turned and walked away, tried to nod to the guard as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but by the time she reached the steps up out of the stronghold she was practically running, wanting only to get out of that deep, dark place.
*
Matty Tinwright woke in his little room beneath the roof of the Quiller’s Mint with a head that felt as though it were full of filthy bilgewater. Notwithstanding his two years’ residence above the tavern (and thus his presumed familiarity with the room’s confines) he managed to strike his head on a beam as he stood—lightly, only lightly, praise to Zosim, godling of both drunkards and poets (a useful coupling since one was so often the other)—and fell back on the bed, groaning.
“Brigid!” he shouted.”Damned woman, come here! My pate is broken!” But of course she had gone. His only solace was that she must be back in the inn tonight, since she was employed downstairs, and he could tax her then with her cruelty for deserting him. Perhaps it would result in a row or a show of sympathy. Either was acceptable. Poets needed excitement, the rush of feeling.
It was increasingly clear that no one was going to bring him anything. Tinwright sat up, rubbing his head and making self-pitying sounds. He emptied his bladder into the chamber pot, then staggered to the window.
If it had been earlier or later in the day, he would have dispensed with the pot as an unnecessary intermediate stage, but Fitters Row was crowded. It was caution rather than courtesy that led him to empty the pot carefully in a place where no one was walking: only last month a burly sailor had objected to being pissed on from a high window and Tinwright had barely escaped with his life.
He made his way down what seemed like an endless succession of stairs to the common room. The bench where Finn Teodoros and Hewney had kept him up past midnight with their cruel drinking game was empty now, although there were silent men sitting on a half dozen of the other benches, laborers from Tin Street drinking an early lunch. Matty Tinwright couldn’t understand how the poet-clerk and the playwright could both be twenty years his senior and yet hold so much drink, forcing him to match them to preserve honor and thus giving him this head like a broken pot in a bag. It was dreadful the way they carried on, and terrible the way they led a young man like Tinwright into bad habits.
There was no sign of Conary, the proprietor. The potboy, Gil—boy in name only, since he looked to be at least a decade older than Tinwright—sat on a stool behind the plank, guarding the barrels. He had an odd, distracted look on his face at the moment, but he was no bright spark at the best of times. He had already been at the Quiller’s Mint when Tinwright had first arrived, and in all that time had never said anything remotely interesting.
“Ale,” the poet demanded. “I must have ale quickly. My stomach is like a storm at sea—only the sunshine that is pent in the brewer’s hop can quiet this tempest.” He leaned on the counter, belched sourly. “Do you hear? Thunder!”
Gil did not smile, although he was usually polite enough about Tinwright s jokes in his quiet way. After a little more fumbling than usual, he slid a tankard across the plank. The potboy was blinking like an owl in daylight and seemed even more befuddled than usual; Tinwright was delighted to notice that he did not demand payment. Conary no longer gave his lodger even a sniff without coin in hand, and was threatening to evict him from the tiny closet-room at one edge of the top floor as well. Unwilling to risk losing this windfall, Tinwright was preparing to retreat with the tankard to his room before the potboy realized what he had done, and was heartbroken to hear Gil say, “You are a poet . . . ?”
It was too far to the stairs to pretend he had not heard. He turned, an excuse ready on his lips.
“I mean, you can write, can’t you?” the thin-faced man asked him. “You have a good hand?”
Tinwright scowled. “Like an angel using his own quill to dip ink. A great lady once told me that my ode to her would be just as beautiful and useful -were the words to be assembled in a completely different order.”
“I wish you to help me write a letter. Will you do that?” Gil saw Tinwright’s hesitation. “I will pay you money. Would this be enough?” He extended his hand. Nestled in the palm like a droplet of raw sunshine was a gold dolphin. Tinwright gaped and almost dropped his tankard. He had always imagined Gil to be a little simpleminded, with his staring and his silences, but this was idiocy like a gift from the gods. Zosim had heard a simple poet’s prayers, it seemed, and they had reached the god on a generous morning.
“Of course,” he said briskly. “I would be happy to help you. I will take that . . .” he plucked the coin out of the potboy’s hand, “and you will come up to my room when Conary has come back.” He drained the tankard in a long, greedy swallow and handed it to Gil. “Here—I will save you having to carry it down later.”
Gil nodded, his face still as expressionless as a fish lying in a dockside stall. Tinwright hurried up the stairs, half certain that when he reached his room beneath the sloping ceiling the dolphin would be gone, vanished like a fairy-gift, but when he opened his fist it was still there. For the first time a suspicion flared within him and he bit at the coin, but it had the soft solidity of the true stuff. Not that Tinwright had found many chances to bite on gold during his twenty years of life.
Gil stood just inside the door with his arms at his sides.
He truly is more strange than usual, Tinwright thought, but it’s brought me nothing but good. He couldn’t help wondering if Gil had any other little tasks that might need Matty Tinwright’s help—-mending his shirt, perhaps, or helping him off with his boots. If he has more dolphins, I’ll be proud to call him employer, be he ever so stupid. A thought came to him for the first time. But where would a potboy come by gold like this? Killed someone? Well, let us just hope it was somebody who won’t be missed. . . .
At last, Gil spoke. “I want to send a letter. Write the words I say. Make them proper if they need changing.”
“Of course, my good fellow.” Tinwright took up his writing board, one of the few things left he had not been forced to pawn, and sharpened the quill with an old knife stolen from Conary’s kitchen. With this gold, he realized, I will be able to get my bone-handled penknife back. Hah! I will be able to buy one with an ivory handle!
“I do not know greetings such as would go on a letter. You write them.”
“Splendid. And who is the letter for?”
“Prince Barrick and Princess Briony.”
Tinwright dropped his quill. “What? The prince and princess?”
“Yes.” Gil looked at him with his head tilted to one side, more the expression of a dog or a bird than a person. “Can you not write this?”
“Of course,” Matty Tinwright said hurriedly. “Without doubt. As long as it is nothing treasonous.” But he was worried. Perhaps he had been too quick to give thanks to Zosim, who after all was a very capricious sort of godling.
“Good.You are kind,Tinwright. I write to tell them important matters. Write this, the things I will say.” He took a breath. His eyes were almost closed, as though he were remembering rather than inventing. “Tell the prince and princess of Southmarch that I must speak to them. That I can tell them important things that are true.”
Tinwright breathed a sigh of relief as he began an elaborate greeting, since it was clear the letter would be nothing but the self-important ram-blings of an unlettered peasant that the royal twins would doubtless never even see—”To the noble and most honorable Barrick and Briony,” he wrote, “Prince and Princess Regent of Southmarch, from their humble servant . . .” But what is your name? Your full name?”
“Gil.”
“Have you no other name? As mine is not just Matthias, but Matthias Tinwright?”
&n
bsp; The potboy looked at the poet with such incomprehension that Tinwright could only shrug. “. . . From their humble servant, Gil,” he wrote. “Potboy at the inn known as . . .”
“Tell them that the threats they face are worse than they know. That war threatens. And to show them I know the things I speak of, I will tell them what happened to the Prince of Settland’s daughter and her blue dower-stone, and why the merchant’s nephew was spared. You must use just the words I will tell you.”
Tinwright nodded, writing happily as Gil stuttered out his message. He had earned a magnificent wage for the simplest of tasks. No one would take this dream-born nonsense seriously, least of all the royal family.
When he had finished he gave the potboy the letter and bade him goodbye—Gil was going to take it himself to the great keep and give it to the prince and princess, he said, although Tinwright knew the poor fool would get no farther than an amused or irritated guardsman at the Raven’s Gate. As the potboy’s descending footfalls sounded on the stairs, Tinwright lay back on his bed to think of all the ways he would spend his money. His head no longer ached. Life had suddenly become very good.