Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  The signature at the bottom of the parchment said “Jeddin.” She cursed again, but silently this time.

  “I have it,” she said. “It is safe—the blood has not soaked through. Was it the captain who sent this? The Leopard captain?"

  The boy shook his head, puzzled. Qinnitan was puzzled, too, then she had another thought. “Luian? Favored Luian? Did she send this?"

  Now he smiled, although it was a pamed and sickly one, and nodded his head.

  “Very well. You have done what was asked. Now you must go out again, as silently as you came, so as not to wake the ones sleeping outside. I truly am sorry. Have someone dress that wound properly. Tell them . . tell them you fell on a stone in the garden.”

  The boy looked doubtful, but he rose and patted his bandage to make sure it was still in place. He bowed to her, and the courtly display was so strange in the middle of the night, with the lamplight and the smears of blood on the floor, that she almost laughed with shock to see it. A moment later he slipped out through the curtains and was gone.

  Qinnitan waited, listening to the silence, then bent to the task of cleaning the blood from the floor, blotting it up with another of her own rags. The thought of reading what Jeddin had to say filled her with a sour dismay Was it some foolish love poem that had almost cost a child his life? Or was it something newer and more dangerous, him ordering her to meet him somewhere, with the same sort of threats he had used to cow Luian into cooperation?

  Finished, with the room exactly as it had been before the midnight vis-ltors arrival, she set the lamp on her bedside table and sat cross-legged on the bed, leaning close so she could read.

  Beloved,

  it began. She stared at Jeddin’s precise and surprisingly delicate script. At least he’s left my name off it, she thought, but a moment later the power of that single word reached out and struck her as powerfully as a blow How had things come to this? It was like something out of an old story, that this powerful man should risk both their lives to prove his love, and that another even more powerful man—the mightiest on earth—should have already claimed her as his own.

  Me! Me, Qinnttan. It was impossible to compass.

  I was a fool to take the risk of meeting you. You were right to tell me so. There is talk. One of my enemies suspects. It must be Vash the chief minister but he can prove nothing.

  Dread seized her, so powerful it almost stopped her breath. She did not want to read any more. But she did.

  However the day may come when he can act against me despite the favor the autarch all praise to His name has shown me. No it is because of the favor that the Golden One has shown me. He hates me. Vash I mean. As do others here.

  I must prepare for a day when things might change. I have my own followers loyal to me but my own safety would mean nothing to me without you. If such a day should come I will send a messenger to you who will speak the sacred name Habbih. And just as the son of the great god went down from the mountains and his enemies and onto the boat that brought him wounded to Xis so we will sail to freedom. In the harbor in a ship near to the Habbih temple there is a small fast ship named Morning Star of Kirous. I did not name it after you my beautiful star. I have had it since I was first lifted to my place over the autarch’s Leopards but when I learned that some in the Seclusion called you by that name it only proved to me that the fates have meant this for us from the first. When you go there show the captain this ring. He will know it and show you all courtesy and when I join you you will see how sweetly that morning star sails.

  I hope it will not come to this beloved. I may yet defeat Pinimmon Vash and my other enemies and perhaps find some way that our love can grow under the Golden One’s sunshine. But as the saying goes there is no rest in a viper’s den—not even for vipers.

  He had signed his name with a flourish.

  Fool, she thought Oh Jeddin, you fool! Had the boy woken up the guards or even her servants, had this fallen into anyone’s hand, she and Jeddin and probably Luian would all be kneeling before the executioner this very moment. The captain of the Leopards was infected with a particularly dangerous sort of madness, Qinnitan thought, one in which he could praise the autarch even as he schemed to rob the ruler of the earth of his chosen bride.

  She did not love Jeddin, she knew that, but something in his madness touched her. Beneath that powerful body beat the heart of a child—a sad child, running after the rest but forever too slow. And as a grown man he was handsome in a way she could not ignore, that was also true. Qinnitan caught her breath. Could there be something to it after all? Did she dare to have feelings for him? Was there a way he actually could save her from this horrid place?

  She thought about it for only a very short time, then burned the parchment in the lamp’s flame until it was powdery, black ash. But she saved the ring.

  32

  In This Circle of the World

  TEARS:

  Laugh and be joyous

  Says the wolf

  Howl at the sky

  —from The Bonefall Oracles

  The cold rain was slapping down and Fitters Row was a river of mud. Matty Tinwright stepped gingerly from board to board—some of which, like foundering boats, had sunk into the ooze until only the tip of one end protruded—in a determined effort to keep his shoes clean. His new clothing allowance had not run to wooden clogs, or at least the choice between clogs and the largest, most ostentatious ruff for his collar had been no choice at all as far as he was concerned. More than ever, he was determined to make a good appearance.

  One of the boards in mid-street had now disappeared entirely and old Puzzle stood like an allegorical statue of his own name, marooned and peering shortsightedly at the gap in front of him, two full yards of mud as sticky as overboiled marrow. An oxcart was rumbling downhill toward him, filling the road, its drovers making a great clamor as they guided it through the most treacherous spots. Others coming into Fitters Row from Squeak-step Alley—several tradesmen, some soaked apprentices, and more than a few soldiers mustered out of the provinces—now stopped in the shelter beneath the overhanging buildings to watch the unfolding events. The oxcart would not arrive in a hurry, but neither did the ancient jester seem to see it coming.

  Tinwright sighed in irritation. He absolutely did not want to go back into the muddy street to drag the man out of danger, but Puzzle was the closest thing to a friend he had these days and he was reluctant to see the old fellow crushed by a wagon.

  “Puzzle! The gods damn your shoes, man, come on! That beast will be standing on you in another moment!”

  The jester looked up, blinking. Puzzle was dressed in what Tinwright thought of as his civilian attire, funereal dark hose and hooded cloak and a hat whose giant, bedraggled brim made it hard for him to see beyond his own muddy feet. It was a far more comic outfit than his motley could ever be; Tinwright thought the old man should wear it to entertain the nobility.

  “Hoy!” shouted Tinwright. The jester seemed to see him at last, then looked around at the approaching oxcart, the irritated animal and its team of cursing drovers so intent on skidding down the muddy street that Puzzle might as well be invisible. He blinked and swallowed, finally understanding his peril. One storklike leg went out, his muck-covered slipper reaching unreasonably for the distant board, then he stepped off and directly into the mud and with a few squeaks and thrashes sank in up to his skinny thighs.

  It was fortunate for Puzzle that the oxcart and its drovers were more at tentive than they had seemed. He suffered nothing worse than a further splattering as the cart slewed to a stop a yard or two away. The ox lowered

  its head and stared at the blinking, mud-slathered jester as though it had never seen such a strange creature.

  It was not the entrance that Tinwright had planned, so it was just as well that his old haunt the Quiller’s Mint was dark and crowded and scarcely anyone even glanced up to see them come in. A trio of outland soldiers laughed at the brown shell hardening on Puzzle’s lower extremities,
but made a little room for the shivering old man as Tinwright deposited him beside the fire. He snagged the potboy as he ran past—a child of nine or ten had replaced Gil, he noticed, doubtless one of Conary’s multitude of relatives, but young enough not to have become work-shy yet—and bade the boy bring a brush and some rags to get ofFthe worst of the mud. This done, Tinwright sauntered up to the serving table where Conary was breaching a cask. It was a real table now, not just a trestle-board; the poet couldn’t help being impressed and a little irritated. The coming siege had brought some good to someone, as the crowd of unfamiliar drinkers gathered in the Quiller s Mint proved, but it did take a bit of the luster offTin-wright’s own advancement in the world.

  Conary’s look was sour, but it took in the huge ruff and the new jacket. “Tinwright, you whoreson, you stole my potboy.”

  “Stole him? Not I. Rather, it was him that nearly got me banged up in the stronghold under the keep. But good has come of it, so I do not begrudge him. I am the princess regent’s poet now.” He examined a stool, then wiped it with a kerchief before sitting down.

  “The princess gone deaf, then, has she? Poor girl, as if she didn’t have troubles enough.” Conary put his hands on his hips. “And if you’re nz so high in the world, you can bloody well pay me them three starfish you owe, or I’ll have the town watch in to pitch you into the street again.”

  Tinwright had forgotten about that and couldn’t help making a face, but he had come flush today thanks to money he had borrowed from Puzzle, and he did his best to move the coins ungrudgingly from his purse to the tabletop. “Of course. I was detained at the pleasure of the regent, you see, or else I would have been back to pay you long ago.”

  Conary looked at the coppers as though for the first time—new ruff and quilted jacket notwithstanding—he might consider believing in Tinwright ‘s exalted new position. “Are you drinking, then?”

  “Aye. And my companion is the king’s own royal jester, so you would do well to bring a jug of your best ale over to the fire. None of that rubbish you give everyone else.” He waved his hand grandly.

  “Another starfish, then,” said Conary. “Because them three are mine, remember?”

  Tinwnght grunted—was he not clearly now worthy of credit?—but disdainfully dropped another coin on the tabletop.

  Puzzle appeared to have thawed out a bit, although he had abandoned the scraping of his soiled hose and slippers with quite a bit of mud still on them and was staring into the fire as though trying to imagine what such a fascinatingly hot and shiny thing might be called.

  “Now, is this not better than trying to find a place to drink in the castle kitchens?” Tinwright asked him loudly, “with the soldiers elbowing and shoving like geese fighting for grain?”

  Puzzle looked up. “I . . . I think I have been in this place before, long ago. It burned down, didn’t it?”

  Tinwright waved his hand. “Aye, many years back, or so I’m told. It is a low place, but it has its charms. A poet must drink with the common folk or else he will lose himself from too much contemplation of high things, so I sometimes came here before I was raised up.” He looked around to see if anyone had noted his remarks, but the outlanders by the fire were playing at dice and paying no attention.

  “Well, well.” A jug of ale and two tankards clanked down onto the hearth at their feet and Puzzle’s eyes bulged at the expanse of bosom revealed by the woman bending over. She straightened up. “Matty Tinwright. I thought you were dead or gone back to West Wharfside.”

  He gave Brigid his most amiable nod. “No, I have had other duties that have kept me away.”

  She pinched at his jacket, let a ringer trail across his starched ruff. “It seems you’ve come high in the world, Matty.”

  This was more like it. He smiled and turned to Puzzle. “You see, they remember me here.” The old man didn’t appear to be listening very closely. His weak eyes were following the quiver of flesh above Brigid’s bodice like a starving man eyeing a dripping roast. Tinwright turned back to the girl. “Yes, Zosim has smiled on me. I am now poet to the princess regent herself.”

  The wench frowned a little, but then her own smile came back. “Still, you must get a bit lonely up at the castle, even with all those fine ladies. You must miss your old friends—your old bed . . . ?”

  Now it had become a bit much, and even though the old man was still goggling at the girl’s breasts, happily oblivious, Tinwright himself didn’t really want to be reminded of his previous situation. “Ah, yes,” he said, and though he spoke airily he gave her a stern look. “I suppose a few nights Hewney and Theodoros and I did sleep here after having a few scoops too many. Riotous times.” He turned for a moment to Puzzle. “We poets have a weakness for strong drink because it sets the fancy free to roam.” He patted Brigid on the bum, as much to get her attention as anything else, and tried to slip her a ha’fish. “Now, my girl, if you don’t mind, my companion and I have important business to discuss.” She stared at him and his proffered coin. “Be a good lass, Brigid—that is your name, if I remember correctly, yes . . . ?”

  Afterward he was glad she had not been holding a mug or a tray, but even the bare-handed slap on the back of the skull was enough to bring tears to his eyes and pitch his new hat into the ashes at the front of the hearth.

  “You dog!” she said, so loud that half the crowded tavern turned to watch. “A few days past the walls of the inner keep and you think your pizzle has turned to solid silver? At least when Nevin Hewney falls asleep on top of a girl, drooling and farting and limp as custard, he doesn’t pretend he’s done her a favor.”

  He could hear laughter from the other patrons as she flounced away, but his ears were ringing from the blow and their gibes were no louder in his throbbing head than the noise of a distant river.

  With a few tankards of ale in his belly, even the watery piss that Conary sold at the Mint, Puzzle had become positively animated. “But I thought you said the other day that you were commanded to go with the soldiers,” the old man asked, wiping a thin line of froth from his lips. “To be a war-poet or somesuch.”

  Much of the good cheer had gone out of him now, but Tinwright did his best. “Oh, that I spoke of it to the castellan—Lord Naynor, his name is?”

  “Nynor” Puzzle frowned a little. “Not a mirthful fellow. Never been able to make him laugh. Thinks too much, I suppose.”

  “Yes, well I was eager to go, of course, but Nynor felt I would be of more use if I stayed here—to lift up the spirit of the princess, with her brother away and all.” In actuality, it had been Nynor who had come to him to make arrangements—he had heard of Princess Briony’s offhand commission through some source Tinwright could not even guess—and Tinwright had gone down on his knees, even wept a little, swearing that it was all a mistake, that someone had misunderstood one of Briony’s offhand remarks. Nynor had said he would have to speak with her himself, but that had been days ago and the prince regent and the army had ridden out since then, so Tinwright felt he was now fairly safe. Still, even thinking about it, he could barely restrain a shudder. Matty Tinwright going to war! Against monsters and giants and the gods alone knew what else! It didn’t even bear thinking about. No, his smooth skin and handsome face were suited only for battles of the more intimate kind, the sort that took place in beds and secluded hallways, and from which both combatants walked away unharmed.

  “I asked to go,” Puzzle suddenly proclaimed. “They’ve no use for me here, those two. Not like their father. There was a good man. He understood my jokes and tricks.” In a moment he had gone from chucklingly cheerful to teary-eyed. “They say he is still alive, King Olin, but I fear he will never come back. Ah, that good man. And now this war and all.” He looked up, blinking. “Who are we fighting? Fairies? I understand none of it.”

  “Nobody does,” Tinwright said, and here he was again on firm ground. “The rumormongers are running mad even in the castle, so who knows what they are saying out in the city?” He pointed to a
group of men standing over a table, smoking long pipes and sharing a broadsheet. “Do you know what that scurrilous pamphlet claims? That the princess regent and her brother have murdered Gailon Tolly, the Duke of Summerfield.” He shook his head, genuinely angry. To think that someone could speak such calumnies of the lovely young woman who had recognized Tinwright’s quality and raised him up from the undeserved muck of places like this to the heights for which he was meant . . . He shook his head and downed the remains of his fourth or fifth tankard. He would have liked another, but Brigid was still serving and he dared not call her over again.

  Puzzle was looking around, too. “She’s very pretty, that girl.”

  “Brigid? Yes, pretty enough, but her heels are as round as the full moon.” He scowled into the lees at the bottom of his mug. “Be grateful you are past the age of such things, my good fellow. Women like that are the bane of man’s existence. A night’s innocent tumble and they feel they can tie a string to your freedom and drag it around behind them like a child’s toy.”