by Tad Williams
The guard who had been giving Tinwright unpleasant looks took a few steps toward him, mail clinking, until he stood just over him. The man carefully—but not too carefully—lodged the point of his pike in the cracks of the stone floor only inches from Tinwright’s groin. If this had been an important occasion, or at least the nicer sort of important occasion, it would unquestionably have been crimping Matty’s codpiece.
“I saw you in the Badger’s Boots,” the guard said. Painfully conscious of the pike planted between his thighs like a conqueror’s flag, Tinwright was momentarily bewildered, thinking that he had been accused of stealing the footwear of some guard-troop mascot. “Did you hear me, little man?”
Suddenly, his wits began to work again. The man was talking about a tavern by the Basilisk Gate that Tinwright had visited a few times, usually in the bibulous company of the playwright Nevin Hewney. “No, sir, you mistake me,” he said with all the honesty he could feign. “I have never passed the door. I am a partisan of the Quiller’s Mint in Squeakstep Alley. A fellow like yourself would not know the Mint, of course—it is a low, low place.”
The guard smirked. He was young, but already with a sizable belly on him and a doughy, unpleasant face. “You took my woman away from me. Told her she would enjoy being with a clever fox like you more than the pig who was squiring her.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong, good sir.”
“You said she had breasts like fine white cake and an arse like a pomegranate.”
“No, a peach, surely,” said Tinwright, remembering how drunk he had been that night and horrified to think he might have employed a simile as clumsily unlovely as “pomegranate.” A moment later he clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, but it was too late. His unruly tongue had betrayed him again.
The guard favored him with a gap-toothed grin that the poet felt sure did not have much to do with concern for his well-being or appreciation for an adept bit of flirtation. The guard leaned close and reached out with his thick fingers, then took Tinwright’s nose and twisted it, hanging on until the poet let out a terrified squeak of pain. The guard bent until his cheese-stinking maw was only a finger’s breadth away, which meant there was one small benefit of Tinwright’s nose being at this moment so agonizingly crimped shut. “If the lord constable doesn’t want your head off—and if he does, I’ll be first in line for the chore—then I’ll be over to see you at Quiller’s Mint, and soon. I’ll cut some bits off you,”—he gave the nose another twist for emphasis, “—and then we’ll see how the ladies like you.”
The door to the stronghold rattled open. The guard let go of Tinwright’s snout and straightened up, but not before giving it a last cruel tweak. Tinwright was left with tears welling in his eyes and a feeling like someone had set fire to the center of his face.
“Perin’s smallclothes, is the swindler crying?” a voice boomed from just above him. “Are there no true men left in this kingdom who are not soldiers? Are all the rest just pimps and coney-catchers and womanish weepers like this one?” The vast shape of Lord Constable Avin Brone loomed over him, his beard a gray-black thundercloud. “Are you grizzling because of your crimes against the crown, man? That may help you with the Trigonate priests, but not with me.”
Tinwright blinked away the tears. “No, my lord, sire, I am guilty of nothing.”
“Then why are you blubbing?”
Somehow Tinwright did not think it would be a good idea to mention what the guard had done. That might turn the beating the man intended to give him into something more likely to prove fatal. “I . . . I have a catarrh, sire. It strikes me like this, sometime. This damp air . . .” He waved his hand to indicate the surroundings, but then had another moment of panic. “Not that I have any complaint against the place, sire. I have been excellently well treated.” He was babbling now. Tinwright had never seen Brone from closer than a stone’s throw: the fellow looked as though he could crush a poet’s skull with one meaty hand. “The walls are very sturdy, my lord, the floor well-made.”
“I suspect someone struck you,” said the lord constable. “If you don’t shut your mouth now, I will probably do it again myself.” He turned to one of the royal guards who had risen from the bench. “I’m taking both prisoners.” He waved to one of the pair of soldiers whom he had left waiting by the stronghold door; both wore the livery of Landsend, Brone’s own fiefdom. “Fetch this pair along,” he told his man. “Beat them if you have to.”
The stronghold guard looked a little surprised. “Do . . . are the prince and princess . . . ?”
“Of course they know,” Brone growled. “Who do you think has bid me bring them out?”
“Ah. Yes. Very good, my lord.”
Tinwright scrambled to his feet. He was determined to go without trouble. He did not want to be hurt anymore, and he certainly did not want the huge and frightening lord constable to get any angrier.
Despite his terror, Tinwright couldn’t help but be surprised when Brone and the two soldiers took them a long, winding way through the back of the great hall and at last into a small but beautifully appointed chapel. One look at the paintings on the wall told him that it must be the Erivor Chapel itself, dedicated to the Eddons’ patron sea god, one of the most famous rooms in all of Southmarch. The decor seemed appropriate in a way, because Gil the potboy had walked all the way there as slowly and distractedly as if he were in water over his head. Tinwright was puzzled to be in such a place, but felt a little better: surely they would not just kill him outright, if for no other reason than fear of getting blood on the celebrated wall frescoes.
Unless they strangle me. Didn’t they used to strangle traitors? His heart raced. Traitors! But this is mad—I am no traitor! I only wrote the letter because that criminal Gil blinded me, a poor poet, with his ill-gotten gold!
By the time Avin Brone was seated on a long bench that had been set near the altar, Tinwright was almost crying again.
“Quiet,” Brone said.
“My lord, I . . . I . . .”
“Shut your mouth, fool. Do not think that because I have sat down I will not get up and hit you. The pleasure will be worth the exertion.”
Tinwright subsided immediately. The fists sticking out of the man’s lace cuffs were the size of festival loaves. The poet stole a look at Gil, who not only did not seem frightened, but actually seemed mostly unaware of what was going on around him. Curse you and your gold! Matty Tinwright wanted to scream at him. You are like some poison-elf out of a story, bringing bad luck to everyone.
Figuring the best way to keep himself out of trouble would be to squeeze shut his eyes and mouth and pray to the god of poets and drunkards (even though the answer to his last prayer seemed to have led him to the doorstep of a traitor’s cell), he was not aware for a moment that new-comers had entered the room. It was the girl’s voice that startled his eyes open.
“These two?”
“Yes, Highness.” Brone pointed at Gil. “This is the one who made the claims. The other says he only wrote it for him, although I have my doubts—you can see which one looks more likely to have put the other up to mischief.”
Tinwright had a strong desire to shriek out his innocence, but he was slowly learning how to behave in a situation where he had no power. A half dozen new people had entered the chapel. Four of them were royal guards, who had established themselves near the door and were exchanging mildly contemptuous glances with the lord constable’s red-and-gold-clad Landsenders; the other two, he was astonished to recognize, were King Olin’s surviving children, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick.
“Why here?” the fair-haired princess asked. Tinwright had to look twice to make sure she was the one speaking. She was pretty enough in a tall, bony sort of way—Matty Tinwright liked his women soft, pale, and round-edged as a summer cloud—but her hair was loose and she was dressed very strangely in a riding skirt and hose and a long blue jacket like a man’s. Her wan, red-ringleted brother was all in black. Tinwright had heard of the prince’s perp
etual mourning attire, but it was quite astounding to see Barrick Eddon so close, as though he were just another drinker in the Mint—to see both of the young regents here in front of him, as close and as real as could be, as though Tinwright himself were a court favorite they had come to visit. A fantasy about it warmed him for a flickering instant. Ah, what bliss that would be, to have royal patrons . . . !
“We are here because it is private,” Brone said.
“But you said they were only trying to trick us into giving them money for false information.”
Tinwright suddenly lost interest in patronage and how the prince and princess were dressed. In fact, he was having great difficulty swallowing: it felt as though a hedgehog had crawled into his throat. If they decided that he was guilty of trying to defraud the royal family, they might very well have his head; at the least, he would be banished to one of the smaller islands or sent to work the fields until he was old, until even a tinker’s skinny wife would not slip him a copper for his charming speech (and more physical attentions). Trying to swindle the royal family! He pressed his legs tightly together so as not to piss himself in front of the Eddon twins.
“I said that’s what I suspected,” Brone replied, patiently ignoring the prince’s quarrelsome tone. “But if either or both of them actually do know something, I thought it would be better we found out here instead of in front of the entire court.”
Briony, who had been looking at Tinwright in a way that did not seem entirely unkind—although it did not appear particularly sympathetic either—suddenly turned to lantern-jawed Gil. “You. They say you are a potboy at an alehouse in the outer keep. How could you know anything other than tavern gossip about what happened to that Settland caravan?”
Gil stirred, but he seemed to have trouble fixing his eyes on her. “I . . . I do not know. I only know that I had dreams, and that those dreams . . . showed me things.”
“Say, ‘Your Highness,’ scum,” Brone snarled.
Briony waved her hand. “He is . . . I don’t know, simpleminded, I think. Why are we troubling with him at all? With either of these two lackwits?”
Tinwright wished he had the courage to bristle, to protest. It was disappointing that the princess seemed to be unaware of his small but growing reputation, but surely it must be obvious from looking at him that he was not of the same mettle as poor Gil.
“She’s right,” said Prince Barrick. He spoke more slowly and haltingly than reports of his mercurial nature would have suggested. “That merchant fellow probably told everyone in Southmarch what happened to him. And spread it over half the countryside before he even got here, as well.”
“If you look at the letter these two sent us,” Brone told them patiently, “it says, ‘I can tell you of the Prince of Settland’s daughter and why she was taken, with her guards and her blue dower-stone.’ That’s why we’re bothering with these lackwits.”
“I don’t understand,” said the princess.
“Because the merchant Beck didn’t know about the great sapphire the girl was bringing to Earl Rorick as part of her dowry. Nobody in the caravan knew, not even the guards, because her father was afraid of theft. I only know myself because I received a letter out of Settland a few days ago, carried to me by a monk. The prince wrote to ask after his daughter and her safety, since he had heard disturbing rumors, and he specifically mentioned the sapphire she was carrying—in fact, it seemed almost as important to him as his child, so it is either a very expensive stone or he is a less than doting father. In any case, how . . . ?”
“How can a mere potboy know about the stone?” Briony finished for him. She turned to Gil. “And you claim this came to you in dreams? What else can you tell us?”
He shook his head slowly. “I have forgotten some of what I meant to say, some of the things I heard and saw when I was sleeping. I was going to have Tinwright put it all down in writings for me, but the guards came and took me away from the Quiller’s Mint.”
“So even if he did somehow know something,” said Barrick, his words ripe with disgust, “he doesn’t know it now.”
“I know you saw the ones in black,” Gil told the prince.
“What?”
“The ones in black. The walls aflame. And the man with the beard, running, calling you. I know you saw it . . .”
He did not finish because Barrick leaped forward and wrapped his hands around the potboy’s neck. Although Gil was a grown man, he offered no resistance. Barrick shoved the scrawny figure down to the floor and climbed onto his chest, shouting, “What does that mean? How could you know about my dreams?”
“Barrick!” Briony rushed forward and grabbed at his arms. The potboy was not struggling, but his face was turning a terrible, hectic red. “Let go—you’ll kill him!”
“How could you know? Who sent you? How could you know?”
As Tinwright watched in astonishment, the lord constable—moving with surprising swiftness for all his bulk—yanked the boy off the gasping but still unresisting Gil. “I beg your your pardon, Highness, but have you lost your wits?” he demanded.
The prince squirmed free of the big man’s clutch. Barrick was breathing harshly, as though he had been the one strangled instead of the other way around. “Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!” he shouted at Brone. “Nobody can speak to me like that!” He seemed about to cry or to scream again, but instead his face suddenly went stony as a statue. He turned and walked out the chapel door, although it was a walk that was only one headlong step away from becoming a run. Two of the guards exchanged a weary look, then peeled off and followed him.
The potboy was sitting up now, wheezing quietly.
“How could you know about my brother’s dreams?” Briony Eddon demanded.
Gil took a moment to answer. “I only tell what I saw. What I heard.”
She turned to Brone. “Merciful Zoria preserve me, I think sometimes I’m going mad—I must be, because otherwise I can make no sense of the things that happen in this place. Do you understand any of this?”
The lord constable did not answer immediately. “I . . . for the most part, I am as puzzled as you, my lady. I have a few ideas, but I think it unwise to share them in front of these two.” He jabbed his bearded chin toward Tinwright and the potboy.
“Well, we must do something about them, that’s sure.” Briony frowned. Tinwright still did not find her particularly fetching, but something about the princess definitely drew his attention, and it was not just her fame and power. She was very . . . forceful. Like one of the warrior goddesses, he thought.
“Clearly we must at least keep the potboy until we find the secret of his knowledge,” Brone said, giving the poet a spark of hope. Perhaps they would let him go! “Not to mention discovering how he got his hands on that gold dolphin he gave to this so-called poet. I suppose I can find a place for the potboy in the guard room—he’ll be under many eyes there. But I am not sure we want this other one gossiping in the taverns about what he’s seen.” Brone frowned. “I imagine you won’t simply let me kill him.” Suddenly breathless, Tinwright could only hope it was meant as a joke. He was relieved when the princess shook her head. “Too bad,” Brone told her, “because there is little need for his shiftless sort, and Southmarch already has armies of them.”
“I don’t care what you do with the one who wrote the letter.” Briony was staring fixedly at Gil; Tinwright had an inexplicable twinge of jealousy. “I doubt he has anything to do with this matter—the potboy cannot write and needed someone to do it. Send the poet back home and tell him we’ll cut his head off if he whispers a word. I need to think.”
Tinwright had suffered a series of glum realizations. If he went back to the Quiller’s Mint, he would soon be getting that promised visit from the guard whose woman he apparently stole; not only would he be brutally beaten, but it would be for something he couldn’t even remember—drinking with Hewney nearly always ended in oblivion. He could only hope the wench had been pretty although, looking at th
e guard, he rather doubted it. But since the lord constable had confiscated his gold dolphin, he couldn’t afford to move elsewhere. There was no well-heeled lady in his life at the moment to take him in, only Brigid who lived at the Mint. And the cold weather had come. It would be a bad time to live in the streets.
Tinwright was now feeling extremely sorry for himself. For a moment he considered concocting a story of his own to make himself more useful and important, pretending that he shared some of the potboy’s strange knowledge, but one look at the massive Brone convinced him of the folly of that. For some reason, Gil actually did know things he shouldn’t, but Tinwright could summon no such weaponry, even in bluff. He contemplated the distracted princess and an idea struck him so abruptly that he couldn’t help wondering if Zosim was trying to make up for the fickle cruelty of his other gift. He dropped to his knees on the floor.
“My lady,” he said in his most sincere voice, the one that had kept him in food and drink since he first ran away from home, “Highness, may I beg a favor? It is far too much and I am far too lowly, but I beg you at least to hear me . . .”
She looked at him. That was a first step, at least. “What?”
“I am a poet, Princess—a humble one, one whose gifts have not always been rewarded, but those who know me will tell you of my quality.” She was losing interest so he hurried ahead. “I came here in fear and trepidation. My attempt to do a kindness for my simple friend the potboy has caused you and your brother pain. I am devastated . . .”
She smiled sourly. “If you tell anyone about this, you certainly will be devastated.”
“Please, only hear me, Highness. Only hear your humble servant. Your attention to the cares of the land have doubtless prevented you from knowing of the panegyric I am writing about you.” That, and the fact that he had been writing no such thing before this moment.
“Panegyric?”