by Tad Williams
“Never mind.” Much as she would have liked things to return to what they had once been, Briony could not make it so by wishing: just looking at Rose’s sweet, open face reminded her of Brone, the girl’s uncle. The time was coming fast when she must confront him with what the play-wright Teodoros had seen. It was clear from the way Brone looked at her that King Olin’s closest supporter knew something was wrong, but she could not bear to face him until after her father’s funeral. Still, it could not wait longer than that. If the man was an enemy, as she had become more and more certain, wasn’t it dangerous letting him walk free when he must know that she suspected him? No, she must deal with him tonight, after the funeral.
“Send for Tallow, the master of the royal guard,” she told a waiting page. “I have an hour until the service begins, so I would see him now.”
“Stop squirming!” Rose scolded as the boy hurried out. “If you don’t let me tame this last unruly curl, you will have hair like a beggar woman’s!”
To Briony’s surprise it was not Jem Tallow who responded to her summons.
“Princess,” said Ferras Vansen, kneeling just inside the doorway, “I heard your summons and took it upon myself to answer in Tallow’s place. If I have done wrong, I apologize.”
She sighed, but not so loud that he could hear it. “Apologies certainly seem to be your stock in trade, Captain Vansen. Do you truly think you have so much to be sorry for?”
He colored a little. “More than I would like, Highness. I spoke out of turn when I claimed I brought your brother back to you. The truth is, I left him in the shadowlands, although it was not by choice. He brought himself back to Southmarch.”
It was strange how much he reminded her of Barrick—not in how he looked, or spoke, or acted, all of which could not have been more different, but in how he made her feel, frustrated and yet affectionate at the same time. But there was something more in what she felt for him than she had ever felt for her brother—something she did not know what to do with. And of course, there was Eneas, still waiting for an answer. . . .
She did her best not to show the confusion of her thoughts. “I have need of the guard tonight, after the funeral. Will you make certain that a troop of them come to me in the new throne room?”
“The tent?” He colored again. “I do not mean to make light of it . . .”
She laughed. “It is a tent. You only tell the truth.”
“Of course, Highness. A half-pentecount of your best men will be there—I will see to it.” He rose and would have backed out the door, but she held up her hand.
“We have scarcely spoken in this last tennight, Captain Vansen. I will have one of the pages bring you a chair, and you can tell me more about what you have gone through.” She waved to one of the boys. “There is so much about what happened here that I still can’t understand.”
“Nor can any of us, Highness,” he said somberly. “I suspect we would know more if we could hear from everyone who fought here, from Funderlings and upgrounders, even the Qar and the Xixians ...”
“Upgrounders? What does that mean?”
“Your pardon, Princess. That is what the Funderlings call us—that and ‘Big Folk.’ It is strange how living among them I began to forget that I was not one of them, although I had twice their size!”
“Then tell me about them, Captain. Tell me about my brother, too, and what happened to you both in the shadowlands. Tell me everything you can. I bury my father this afternoon, and I dread it.”
“I will never forgive myself that we could not save him,” Vansen said, eyes downcast.
“Enough. You brought his body back to me. And I was able to speak to him once myself, before the final days.”
“Truly?” He had not heard about this, it was clear.
“Yes. So let us talk, Captain Vansen.” She looked around at the maids and the ladies-in-waiting, the half dozen young pages, the life that had recaptured her. “I fear we may never have such a chance again.”
Vansen was ordinarily not much of a speechmaker, but the spirit of the tale caught him up: by the time he had finished telling of the last hours in the Funderling Mysteries, everyone in Briony’s chamber had gathered around, servants and nobility together, all with open mouths and fearful faces. As he warmed to his task, he showed flashes of the dry wit he often hid, and although he downplayed his own role, Briony could see the many places where he shifted the credit to others. It reminded her a little of the way her father had told stories of his year fighting in Hierosol, and this in turn reminded her of the far less pleasant task that awaited her.
“Thank you, Captain Vansen,” she said when he stopped to drink from a cup of wine one of the ladies had brought him. “It is a gift of Heaven that our beloved Southmarch survived, but we lost so many.” She shook her head. “My father, dear Chaven, all your brave Funderlings, and so many more.” She did her best to smile, but it was difficult. “Now it is time to go to the funeral. You will not forget your promise to me, will you?”
He looked startled. “I beg your pardon, Highness? My promise . . . ?”
“To see that the royal guard attends me tonight after the funeral?”
“Ah.” He seemed both relieved and disappointed. What else had he been expecting? Some embarrassing display of gratitude? Had she been wrong about his feelings for her after all? Not that it mattered. With Olin dead and her brother determined to leave Southmarch behind, Briony knew she no longer had the right to her own affections—to anything except what was good for the land and its people. “Of course, Highness,” he told her. “I will see that your guard remains with you after the funeral.”
“Thank you, Captain Vansen. I owe you an apology and it . . . it troubles my sleep. I am truly sorry for the things I said to you in my time of pain after Kendrick’s death. You are a good man and you have proved it many times over.”
Something strange moved just beneath his calm features. Anger? Sorrow? “I seek only to serve you, Highness,” was all Vansen said. “And the March Kingdoms, of course.”
He rose quickly, bowed again, and hurried out. Briony sat for a moment, mustering the strength to rise and attend to her duties as chief mourner. Surrounded by her ladies and other folk, she still felt quite alone.
Vansen did not like Briony’s choice to hold the king’s funeral in the dubious safety of the commons outside the royal residence, although he understood her desire to give the castle’s population a chance to mourn together. Still, even though Durstin Crowel had finally surrendered and had been taken to the stronghold with his last supporters, some of Tolly’s most dangerous allies like Berkan Hood were still unaccounted for, and although the guards were still vigorously searching for Hood, Ferras Vansen thought it was unforgivably dangerous for Briony to put herself and her father’s infant son out in the open where an arrow from some distant rooftop could leave Southmarch without a ruler no matter what the undermanned royal guard tried to do.
It only made him more confused about the days ahead. The royal guard, like the castle that housed them and the Eddon clan that employed them, had to be rebuilt. Jem Tallow had already tried to relinquish control to his former captain several times, but Vansen was not entirely certain he wanted his old position back. For one thing, it would force him to see Briony Eddon every day, and while that was in some ways his fondest wish, he also knew that being so close to her and unable to have her would be torment. And how long would it be until she gave herself to Eneas of Syan? What of Ferras Vansen, then? He would be little more than a page with a sword.
Somehow it also seemed pointless to go back to doing what he had done before, however necessary it might be. Once you had fought both a god-king and an actual god, it would not be easy to return to daily duty rosters and the other more mundane parts of his profession. He was looking forward to peacetime—what soldier who had survived this madness wouldn’t be?—but not to the problems of keeping five pentecounts of men occupied and battle-ready while protecting the rulers at every moment.
Eve
rybody had been waiting in the garden since midday as the long shadow of Wolfstooth Spire passed from west to east, but though the mood was somber, the people themselves seemed gathered for a more festive occasion, their places on the sunny grass marked off with blankets and cloaks, the remains of meals still to be seen. The royal family had been through the funeral service already as King Olin lay in state in the hall of the residence. Now, with his body hidden inside a somber, sparsely decorated coffin draped in the Eddons’ wolf and stars, the mourning chorus sang the threnody and Sisel spoke the good words that had to be spoken over the dead. Olin the just ruler, Olin the protector of his people, Olin the diplomat—Vansen thought the hierarch spoke of him as though he were one of the deathless Trigonate gods. He thought he would rather have known the man who had fathered Briony, Barrick, and Kendrick, the man who had inspired so much feeling in all of them, but it was not to be. That man had been mortal and now he was dead. Now he was only a story.
“Though the terror and gratitude of those who pray fill thine ears always with myriad voice, O brothers who abide on the holy mountain Xand, yet hearken to us also, and grant this day your favor, that good Olin’s exile now may have an end, and that he may return to you and to his native land, at rest from labor of long journeys ...”
The salt had been sprinkled and Sisel had just begun to chant the final prayer meant to guide the spirit of the departed king when Ferras Vansen felt a stirring among the mourners, as if the crowd were a field of flowers rippled by the wind. Was something amiss? He looked quickly to Briony, who had felt it, too.
A procession was coming up the road between the armory and Wolfstooth Spire; the people at the far end of the commons had already turned to watch it. At first Vansen could see little of the newcomers as they passed through the tower’s shadow, but as their leader stepped out into the sun Vansen saw hair that dazzled like flame. Barrick Eddon had arrived at his father’s funeral. The prince wore clothes of loose-fitting white cloth and a hooded white cloak, much as Queen Saqri had done the few times Vansen had seen her; Vansen realized now that white must be the Qar’s mourning color.
He glanced again to Briony Eddon, but her expression was unreadable. Barrick and the company of fairies who came with him made their silent way up the colonnade beside the commons and then emerged into the sunshine again just short of the residence’s front steps and the king’s body, where Barrick stopped and stood, straight as a sentry.
After a confused few moments Hierarch Sisel continued the prayer. When it was ended the mantises came with their rattles and flutes to lead the procession, and the pallbearers lifted the coffin onto the wagon that would carry it toward the graveyard. It seemed the Eddons meant to keep using their family vault, Vansen noted, no matter what had taken place there or what lay beneath it. But before the pallbearers could take a step, Barrick abruptly stepped forward and laid two sprigs atop the coffin, one of meadowsweet and one of mistletoe, the Orphan’s flowers of immortality. As he did so, he paused for a moment. A look of pain and confusion twisted Barrick’s features and he snatched back his hand—the one that had once been withered and useless—almost as though he had burned it.
The prince and his followers did not accompany the coffin all the way to the graveyard, but turned away near the crumbled walls of the Throne hall and walked back toward the Raven’s Gate and their camp in Funderling Town. Some in the crowd turned to watch them depart, making the sign for the pass-evil, but most paid scant attention, as if the king’s son and his odd companions were only another clutch of mourners.
The funeral feast had ended nearly an hour before, and many of the guests had already retired, though a group of older nobles remained in the residence’s long, low dining room drinking wine and telling tales of the late king and of all that had happened since last Olin had sat on Anglin’s throne. Doubtless, many of them also expressed quiet reservations over the fitness of his daughter to rule, and questioned why her brother had made himself so absent from the business of governing the country, but Vansen ignored their conversations as he pulled a few of his more trustworthy guards from their duties in the dining room and led them to the residence parlor that served as Briony’s royal retiring room. The princess was waiting there already, her face carefully empty. To Ferras Vansen, her expression was like a sort of wound: it hurt him to see it.
When his guards had filed in, he turned to Briony. “Shall I go and get Lord Brone, Your Highness?”
She nodded, but scarcely seemed to see him.
To Vansen’s surprise, Avin Brone was waiting just outside the door of the hall—he had arrived while Vansen had been arranging the guards. The big man nodded. “It is good to see you, Captain Vansen. I assume you will not remain much longer in that low rank . . . ?”
“No one has spoken to me of any promotion, Lord Brone.”
“Ah, but I am sure you will be rewarded. I hear you did noble, brave-minded work since your return to Southmarch. Many say that if you hadn’t stiffened the Funderling resistance we would all be slaves now. You must tell me everything that happened one day, Vansen. I wish to hear what you saw. I trust your eyes and thoughts more than any others save my own.”
“Thank you, your lordship.”
The count smiled but he looked tired. “Let us not keep our mistress waiting. After all, she will soon be our queen.” He walked past Vansen to the door.
When Brone had bowed to Briony (not without a little difficulty; the old man had gotten even stouter and his limp was now pronounced) she asked for a bench to be brought so he could sit down.
“Before we get to the meat of things,” she said, “I have a question for you, Brone. Berkan Hood will soon be captured or dead. The post of lord constable is empty. Do you have anyone to recommend?”
Brone cleared his throat. “I can think of no one better than this man here, Ferras Vansen.”
“Not yourself, Lord Brone? You held the post a long time. Do you no longer have confidence in your own abilities?”
“With respect, Highness, do not play games with me. I am too old for that, and also too old to try to be what I was. If you did not want my advice, you should not have asked.”
“Very well, then, let’s not circle like two tavern bullies.” Briony’s smile was hard. “You were my father’s trusted adviser, Brone. You were that to my brother and to me as well.”
“I have been lucky enough to serve the throne and the people of the March Kingdoms. That is well known. Many would say I did it well.”
“Many would, yes—but that is not my complaint.” For the first time, Vansen saw that the emotion she had hidden was not weariness or fear, but rage. Her cheeks were red and her eyes narrowed in fury; for the first time he saw how much like her brother she really was. “You betrayed us, Brone, or you planned to. You schemed to see us all dead—my father, my brothers, and me. What do you say to that?”
Brone did not burst out into a torrent of denials, which made Vansen feel even more that the world had tilted on its foundations. Instead, the old man pressed his chin deep into his beard and frowned with his bushy brows until he seemed like a bear staring out of a cave. “And why do you say that, Your Highness? Who has told you such a thing of me?”
“That is not your affair. But a person I trust has told me that you had a list, and on this list was the name of every member of my family and also the method by which each would be apprehended, imprisoned, and then murdered at your order. Do you deny it?”
Ferras Vansen realized he was holding his breath, and even the guards, his best men, looked startled. Only Avin Brone himself, of all in the long room, did not seem unduly troubled. “No,” he said. “I do not deny it.”
Briony let out a ragged gasp like someone struck a painful blow. “So,” she said at last, her voice barely under control. “You told me to trust no one, Avin Brone. I thank you for the honesty of that lesson.”
“Do you not wish to know the reason why?”
“No. No, I don’t. Guards, take him away. The st
ronghold held a less guilty man in Shaso—it will serve for this villain, too.”
Brone sat, unmoving, as at Ferras Vansen’s signal a quartet of guards in Eddon black and silver surrounded him. “Will you really do this again, Princess?” the old man asked in a mild tone.
“What do you mean?” Briony had pushed her feelings back behind the mask again: she stared like a statue of Divine Retribution.
“You imprisoned Shaso dan-Heza without learning the truth. You regretted it later, as you make clear. Would you repeat that error?”
“Error?” Briony almost jumped out of her chair. “You have admitted you planned to murder my family, Brone! What could you say that would make any difference?” But she did not repeat the order for his removal and Vansen, sensing something afoot, signaled his men to wait. “Speak,” Briony said at last. “It is late and I am tired and sad. I have just buried my father, and I want to go to bed.”
“I loved him, too, Briony.”
“But you planned to kill him!”
“My duty is first and foremost to the throne, Princess. That has always been true. Your father himself was careful to make certain I understood that. Yes, I planned his death—but it was with Olin’s own knowledge.”
“What?” Briony seemed about to spring from her chair and attack him. “Do you claim he wanted see his own family slaughtered . . . ?”
“No!” Now for the first time Brone lost his temper. “No, of course not, Highness! But your father knew he had an illness that no one could cure—an illness of the blood that brought raging madness upon him. For ten years or more, he also knew that Barrick had that same distemper of the blood. You and Kendrick did not seem afflicted, but who could tell?”
“What does my father’s . . . blood have to do with . . . ?”
“He did not trust himself—and to be honest, I could not afford to trust him entirely, either. He was the king, but at least one night every month he was also a beast—a madman. How could I defend the country without planning to deal with the king himself if he went utterly mad? How could I protect the March Kingdoms if his heirs were also infected? If your father lost his mind beyond saving, I was under orders to lock him away—to lock you all away as well until we knew if one of you was trustworthy. And if none of you were, then there would be no point in leaving you alive to foster unrest among the people, who would not understand. I was prepared to put another relative on the throne if necessary, perhaps one of the Brennish cousins—yes, even to kill you all if no other choice was left to me! But I did not wish to, and I only imagined it because your father, may the gods bless his bravery and foresight, ordered me to do so.” So saying, the count of Landsend folded his hands across his belly and stared back at her. “So if you still wish to execute me, Princess, then do so. I will not resist.”