(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  “Huh. I’m not above you or anyone. I’ve been wearing borrowed clothes for nearly a month. At the moment I’m just grateful you’ve taken me into your house.”

  “No, it is our honor, Briony-zisaya.”

  “Do…do your people hate my father? For what he did to Shaso?”

  Idite eyed her, the soft brown eyes full of shrewd intelligence. “I will speak honestly with you, Princess, because I believe you truly wish it. Yes, many of my people hated your father, but as with most things, it has more complicatedness—complication?—than that. Some respected him for forcing his own nobles to spare Shaso’s life, but making a servant out of the Dan-Heza still was seen as dishonorable. Giving him land and honors, that was surprising, and many thought your father a very wise man, but then the people were furious that Shaso was not allowed to come back and fight against the old autarch (may he have to cross each of the seven hells twice!). These are things much discussed among our folk even now, and your father is seen as both hero and villain.” Idite bowed her head. “I hope I have not offended.”

  “No. No, not at all.” Briony was overwhelmed. She had been painfully reminded again how little she knew about Shaso despite his importance to both her father and herself, and she was just as ignorant about many others who had been her helpers and guardians and advisers. Avin Brone, Chaven, old Nynor the castellan—what did she know about any of them beyond the obvious? How had she dared to think of herself as a ruler for even one moment?

  “You seem sad, my lady.” Idite waved for one of the younger women to refill their guest’s cup with flower-scented tea—Briony had not developed a taste for the Tuani’s gawa as yet and she doubted she ever would. “I have said too much.”

  “You’ve made me think, that’s all. Surely that’s nothing to apologize for.” Briony took a breath. “Sometimes we don’t see the shape of things until we’re a long way away, do we?”

  “If I had learned that at your age,” said Idite, “I would have been on the road to deep wisdom instead of becoming the foolish old woman that I am.”

  Briony ignored Idite’s ritualized self-deprecation. “But all the wisdom of the world can’t take you back to change a mistake you’ve already made, can it?”

  “There.” Idite smiled. “That is another step down the road. Now drink your tea and let us talk of happier things. Fanu and her sister have a song they will sing for you.”

  Briony woke on her thirteenth day in the house of the Dan-Mozan to find the women’s quarters bustling. She had still not developed the habit of rising as early as the others—they seemed to get out of bed before the sun was above the horizon—but even so she was surprised by the degree of activity.

  “Ah, she awake!” cried pretty young Fanu, and then added something in the Tuani tongue; Briony thought she recognized Idite’s name in the fast slur of sounds.

  Briony began sluggishly to pull off her nightdress so she could don her own garments, but the women gathered around her, waving their hands and laughing.

  “Don’t do!” said Fanu. “Later. For Idite wait.”

  Briony was grateful that she was at least allowed to wash her face and scrape her teeth clean before Idite arrived. The older woman was beautifully dressed in a robe of spotless white silk with a fringed girdle of deep red.

  “They won’t let me dress,” Briony complained, shamed by Idite’s splendid clothes and feeling more than ever that she was too large and too pale for this household.

  “That is because we will dress you,” Idite explained. “Today is a special day, and special care must be taken, especially for you, Briony-zisaya.”

  “Why? Is someone getting married?”

  Idite laughed and repeated her remark. The other young women giggled. Idite had explained to Briony that most of them were the daughters of other well-to-do families, that they were not Effir’s wives but closer to the ladies-in-waiting of Briony’s own court. Only a few were true servants, and some, like Fanu, were relatives of Idite or her husband. Although Effir dan-Mozan was not a Tuani noble, not in the sense Briony understood it, it was clear that he was an important man and this was an important household, a fine place to send a daughter to learn from a respected woman like Idite.

  “No, no one is to be married. Today is Godsday, and just as you go to your temple, so do we.”

  “But you didn’t take me the last time.” She remembered well the long morning she had spent on her own in the women’s quarters, wishing she had something to read or even some sewing with which to occupy herself, much as she disliked it.

  “Nor will we take you this time,” Idite said kindly, patting Briony’s hand. “You would be welcome, but you are a stranger to the Great Mother and Dan-Mozan my husband says it would be wrong to teach you the rituals, since you are a guest.”

  “So why do I have to dress in a special way?”

  “Because afterward we are going out to the town,” said Idite. The women behind her all murmured and smiled. “You have not been outside the walls of the hadar since you came. My husband thought you deserved to go outside today with the rest of us.”

  She was not certain she liked the word “deserved,” which made her feel like a child or a prisoner, but she was excited at the thought of seeing something other than the inside of the merchant’s house. A cautious thought occurred to her. “And Lord Shaso…? He says it is allowed?”

  “He is coming, too.”

  “But how can I go out? My face is well-known, at least to some…”

  “Ah, that is why we must begin to work on you now, king’s daughter.” Idite smiled with mischievous pleasure. “You will see!”

  By the time the sun had crept above the walls and morning had truly come, Briony sat alone in the women’s quarters waiting for the others to return from their prayers, which were apparently led by a Tuani priest who came to the hadar and held forth in the courtyard. She lifted the beautiful little lotus mirror Idite had placed in her hands, wondering at the changes the women had made. Briony’s skin, fair and freckled, at least in summertime, had been covered all over in powdery light brown paint from one of Idite’s pots, so that she was now only a shade or two paler than Shaso himself. Her eyes had been heavily lined with kohl, her golden hair pulled back so that not a wisp of it showed beneath the tight-fitting white hood. Only her eyes had not changed, the green she had shared with her brother Kendrick as pale as Akaris jade. Idite and the other women had laughed at the contrast, saying that her eyes in that dark skin made her look like a Xixian witch, that she needed only flame-colored hair to complete the picture. This had made her think of redling Barrick, and to her horror she had suddenly found herself weeping, at which point everything had stopped while her eyes and cheeks were dabbed dry and repairs were made. The kohl had to be reapplied completely. As she looked in the mirror now, Briony saw a black spot of it that had dripped from her jaw to her wrist, and she dabbed it away.

  Where was he? Where was her brother now?

  For a moment a wave of such pure pain washed over her that she could barely breathe and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly shut. Every kindness that the people of this house did her only made her feel more lost, the life she knew farther away. She could live without the throne of Southmarch, even without Southmarch itself, strange and lonely as that was to contemplate, but if she could not ever see her father or her brother again she felt sure she would die.

  Barrick, where are you? Where have you gone? Are you safe? Do you ever think of me?

  Suddenly, prodded by something she could not understand, could barely feel, she opened her eyes. There, hovering in the mirror behind her own sorrowing features like the bottom of a pond seen through reflections on its surface, was her twin’s death-pale face, eyes closed. His arms lay across his chest and his wrists were chained.

  “Barrick!” she shrieked, but a moment later he was gone; only her own, now-alien face looked back. I’m going mad, she thought, staring at the horrified, dark-skinned stranger in the mirror, and again began to
weep, this time with no thought for the painstaking work of Idite and the other women.

  As they wound their way through the narrow streets of Landers Port, Briony, a little recovered but still shaken, was surprised by how nice it was merely to be in the chill open air. Still, despite her mummer’s paint and head-to-toe garb, she felt almost naked being out among strangers, and every time she noticed someone looking at her she had to fight an urge to turn and hurry back to the shelter of the merchant’s house. For the first time she really felt what Shaso had said so many times: if the wrong person saw her, it could mean her death. She kept her head down as much as she could, but after so long inside it was hard not to look around a little.

  Many other people were out walking, most of them heading in the same direction as Briony’s party, and the numbers grew as their small procession wound down toward the seafront. Most seemed to be Xandians, dressed in similar fashion to the merchant’s family, the women in long robes, hoods, and veils, the men’s pale garb made festive by long vests in bright colors, sparkling with gold thread. Effir dan-Mozan was at the front of their own little company, nodding gravely to other robed men, and even to a few workaday Marrinswalk folk who called greetings to him. His nephew Talibo walked behind him but in front of the women, head held high like a shepherd with a flock of prize sheep. Even Shaso had come, although he hid his features under high neck-scarf and a four-cornered Tuani hat pulled low over his eyes.

  The women, with Briony at their center to keep her as far as possible from curious stares, her disguise notwithstanding, followed in a whispering, laughing crowd. This, as far as Briony could tell, was the one day they were always allowed out of the house, and despite the presence of the important men of the household, they seemed as confident and cheerful as they did in the privacy of the women’s quarters.

  Landers Port seemed bigger than Briony remembered—not that she had found much chance to examine it when she’d arrived after dark, exhausted and hungry and dripping wet. It was set on a hillside by a wide, shallow bay. A walled manor house and a gray stone temple watched over it all from the hill’s crest. Shaso had told her that the manor belonged to a baron named Iomer, whom she had apparently met but did not remember, a stout landholder with more interest in his fruit trees and pigs than in life at Southmarch court, which perhaps explained his relative anonymity.

  The poor part of town, of which the Dan-Mozan house was one of the few jewels, was located on the south side of the hill near the base, far from the ocean and far from the manor. Thus they did not climb now or descend on this journey so much as they made their way around the bulk of the hill. Since the rich lived high and the poor lived low, as in so many other towns in the March Kingdoms, they passed not from poor neighborhoods to wealthy ones, but from the part of town where the poor had mostly dark skin, or had the Skimmer cast, to places where poverty wore a skin as pale as Briony’s own.

  Or as pale as mine before they put all this paint on me, at least.

  It was interesting and a little disturbing to be stared at for once, not for who she was—something she had grown used to over the years but was never fond of—but because she was traveling in a group of brown-skinned folk. Some people looked only with curiosity, but others, for no reason Briony could tell, stared with unhidden loathing. A few drunken men even leaned out of their doors to shout after them, but seemed to lose interest when they saw the knives on the Tuani men’s belts.

  Briony found it surprisingly hard to be glared at by people she did not know, although she was clever enough to understand it was the other side of the coin from all those folk who had cheered her and showered blessings on her only because she was part of King Olin’s privileged family. But, other side of the coin or not, it was one thing to be loved by strangers, most definitely another to be hated by them.

  So this is how it has been for Shaso as long as he’s been here. She could make nothing of the thought just now, with so much happening around her, but she folded it like a letter and put it away to be examined later.

  Soon, as the narrow road wound between the close-leaning houses, nearing the waterfront, Briony discovered that they were seeing more brown faces again and more wide-eyed, closemouthed Skimmer folk. The smell of the bay also grew stronger, a slightly spoiled tang that seemed to flavor every breath, every thought. She wondered if she would ever again cross the wide waters of Brenn’s Bay to return home openly and safely, whether her family would ever be together again. Seeing Barrick in the mirror that way had frightened her—was it an omen? Were the gods trying to tell her something? But she knew that people sometimes dreamed of things that worried them, and whether the gods had sent her this waking dream or not, it was certain that Barrick and his fate were the things that most worried her.

  They reached a row of ramshackle warehouse buildings along a canal that emptied into Brenn’s Bay, the bay itself visible only a stone’s throw away between buildings, the masts of at least a dozen ships tilting gently just beyond the rooftops.

  Effir dan-Mozan led them in through the doorway of one of the larger structures. Once through, Briony saw it was not a warehouse at all: the first room was long and low, but the walls were covered with beautiful tapestries in unfamiliar designs—birds and deer and trees of strange shape. A man even smaller and rounder than Effir stood in the center of the room, his arms spread wide, his bearded face stretched by a broad smile. “Ziya Dan-Mozan! You and your family grace my humble place of business!”

  “You do me too much honor, Baddara,” the merchant replied with a small bow.

  “Come, come, I have saved the best room for you.” Baddara took Dan-Mozan’s hand and led him toward a door at the back of the room, gesticulating broadly and talking rapidly of ships and the price of gawa. The rest of the merchant’s household followed.

  Briony had edged up beside Shaso. “Why is he speaking our language?”

  “Because he is not Tuani,” the old man growled. “He is from Sania, and they speak a different language there. On the southern continent, Xixian and Mihanni are the tongues everyone shares. Here it is yours.”

  They were led through a large room filled with tables, many of them occupied by men in both southern and northern dress, several of whom greeted Effir dan-Mozan with obvious respect; just as obvious was his easy acceptance of their deference. Shaso, on the other hand, kept his head down, meeting no one’s gaze, and Briony suddenly remembered that she, with her un-Tuani eyes, should most certainly be doing the same. Baddara led them to a private room whose walls were covered by more hangings, hunting scenes and boating scenes on shimmery fabrics done in a style Briony did not recognize. The little man shouted orders to several older bearded men who were clearly meant to serve the guests; then, after another elaborate bow, he hurried out.

  Although the room was theirs alone, Briony noticed with some irritation that the Tuani notion of propriety was still present: she and the other women were seated at one end of the table, the men at the other, with an empty seat between the groups on each side. Still, it was a chance to see something other than the inside walls of the hadar, and she did her best to enjoy the change. The tapestries at least were beautiful to look at, many of them ornately decorated with thread of what looked like real gold, all of them woven with elaborate attention to color and detail—in fact, the tapestries were so compelling that she did not notice for some time that the room had no windows. The woven pictures themselves seemed to look out onto scenes far more soothing and uplifting than anything she could have seen in this small seaport.

  Baddara’s servers brought in several courses, pieces of fruit with a creamy sauce for dipping, and bread, cheese, and salted meats. The women and men both drank wine, although Briony suspected from the separate pitchers and the weak character of what was in her cup that the women’s was more heavily watered. Watered or not, the combination of wine and unusual freedom cheered her companions immensely, and although they spoke in low voices there seemed to be a greater than usual amount of joking and gi
ggling between the women, especially Fanu and the other young ones.

  Meanwhile, as the courses came and went, men both of Xand and Eion wandered in from the rooms outside to engage in what looked like respectful audiences with Effir dan-Mozan, some clearly seafaring folk, others in the fine robes of merchants or bankers. Briony could see that although Shaso spoke to no one and did his best to be inconspicuous, he was listening carefully. She wondered how Dan-Mozan introduced him—as a relative? A stranger? Another merchant? And she wondered even more at what these men were saying. It was infuriating to have to sit here this way, amid this flock of ignored women, while important things about the state of the kingdom were doubtless being discussed.

  If Shaso was paying close attention to the merchant’s conversations, Dan-Mozan’s nephew was not. In fact, Talibo appeared more interested in Briony, watching her with a fixation that unnerved her. At first she did her best to avoid his gaze, looking away whenever she caught him glancing her direction, but after a while the liberty he was taking began to annoy her. He was a child, practically—a handsome, stupid child! What right did he have to stare at her, and even more important, why should she feel compelled to look away? It touched her on the memory of Hendon Tolly humiliating her in front of her own court; it made the old injury sting all over again.

  The next time she caught Tal looking at her she stared back coolly until at last it was the youth who looked away, his cheeks darkening with what she hoped was embarrassment or even shame.

  Insolent boy. For a moment she found herself angry with everyone in the room, Shaso, Dan-Mozan, Idite, the other women, all of them. She was a princess, an Eddon! Why must she hide and skulk like a criminal? Why should she be grateful to people who were only doing their duty? If the Tollys were the active agents of her misfortune, all those who did not rise up against the usurpers and cast them out of Southmarch Castle, even these Tuani merchants, were their passive collaborators. They were all guilty!