Shadowrise (28 page)

“Not . . . not actually
chuckled,
my lord . . .”

“Shut it. And how do you repay this astounding kindness? By kidnapping a high-born woman right out of the royal residence and keeping her as your prisoner! By the Three, man, the torturers are going to be staying up late every night trying to think up new ways to tear the flesh from your body!”

He knows!
Tinwright couldn’t help it—he burst into tears. “By all the gods, I swear it is not that way! She was . . . she is . . . Oh, please, Lord Brone, do not let them torture me. I’m a poor man. I meant only good. You do not know Elan, she is so good, so fair, and Tolly was so cruel to her . . .” He stopped in horror, thinking he might just have made things worse by denouncing the current lord of Southmarch. “No, I . . . she . . . you . . .” Tinwright could think of nothing else to say—his doom was utter and complete. He fell silent but for quiet whimpering.

One of Brone’s bristling eyebrows crept upward. “Tolly? What does this have to do with Tolly? Speak, man, or I will start proceedings here myself and leave just enough left of you for you to gasp out your confession in front of the lord protector.”

And Tinwright did speak, the words hurrying out of him with none of his usual pretense to cleverness, explanations and excuses bumping against each other and sometimes tumbling flat, like sheep hurried down a steep mountain path. When he had finished he sat wiping at his face, peering between his fingers at Brone, who was silent and thinking hard but still scowling fiercely, as if reluctant to let the expression leave his face because he knew he would be using it again soon.

“You are young, aren’t you?” Brone asked suddenly.

All the usual objections rose to his lips, but Tinwright only licked his dry lips and said, “I am twenty, Lord.”

The count shook his head. “I suppose some of the mistakes you have made are the same I might have made at your age.” He shot Tinwright a glance. “But that does not include taking Elan M’Cory out of the castle. That is a capital offense, boy. That is the headsman’s block.”

Tears again filled Tinwright’s eyes. “Oh, gods. How did I ever come to this?”

“Bad company,” said Brone briskly. “To associate with playwrights and poets is to dally with thieves and madmen—what good can come of that? But perhaps all is not up for you—not yet. If the matter of Mistress M’Cory were to remain hidden from the lord protector, then you might yet survive to an honorable old age. But I would be taking a risk on your behalf, knowing and not telling. I would make myself an accessory . . .” He shook his head, grimly, sadly. “No, I fear I cannot take such a risk. I have a family and lands, retainers. It wouldn’t be fair . . .”

“Oh, please, Count Brone.” The big man seemed to be bending a little, leaning toward mercy. Tinwright did his best to make his words sweet and convincing. “Please—I did it only to save an innocent girl! I will do anything for you if you will spare me this terrible fate. My poor mother’s heart would be broken.” Which was a gross untruth, of course: Anamesiya Tinwright would probably be delighted to see her direst predictions come to pass.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But if I am to take such a risk—to let you go when I know that you are guilty, and to cover up that guilt!—then you must do something for me.”

“Anything. Shall I carry messages for you?” He had once heard rumors that Hewney and the others had performed such services for Brone. “Travel to a foreign court?” He could definitely think of worse fates than to leave his mother and his troubles and this entire grim city behind for a few moons.

“No, I think you shall be more use to me closer to home,” said Brone. “In fact, I could use a man with access to Hendon Tolly and his inner circle. I have a number of questions I’d like answered, and you, Matty Tinwright—you will be my spy.”

“Spy? Spy on . . . Hendon Tolly?”

“Oh, not just him. I have many questions and many needs. There is also a certain object whose whereabouts I need to know—it is even possible I’ll ask you to obtain it for me. I suspect it is being kept in the chambers of Okros, the new palace physician. Do not look so worried, Tinwright, it is nothing particularly valuable—simply a mirror.”

A mirror? Could it be the one Tolly had used to torture Elan? But only a fool or lunatic would go near such a thing . . . !

Matt Tinwright stared at the count with dawning horror. “You . . . you never meant to tell Tolly. He has cast you out! You only wanted a spy!”

Avin Brone sat back and twined his fingers together on his broad belly. “Do not bother your head with truth, poet. It is not your field of expertise.”

Tinwright’s heart raced, but he was angry now, angry and humiliated to have been played like such a lackwit. “What if I go to Tolly and tell him you tried to make me a spy in his camp?”

Brone threw back his head and laughed. “What if you do? Would you like him to hear my side of the story—the truth about Lady Elan? And even if trouble came to me as well as to you because of it, I have an estate happily far from Southmarch to which I can retire, and men to protect me. What do you have, little scribbler? Only a neck which will part for the headsman’s ax like a fine sausage.”

Despite himself, Tinwright lifted his hand to his throat. “But what if Tolly catches me?” He was almost crying again.

“Then you will be in the same situation as if I tell him what you’ve done. The difference is, if you do it my way, it will be up to you to keep yourself out of trouble. If
I
tell Hendon Tolly—well, trouble will find you very quickly, there’s no doubt of that.”

Tinwright stared at the old man. “You . . . you are a demon.”

“I am a politician. There is a difference, but you are too green to understand it. Now listen carefully, poet, while I tell you what you must do for me . . .”

—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”

 

 

B
ARRICK EDDON.
What a strange, strange name. For a moment Qinnitan could not understand why it ran through her head as she lay in the dark, over and over like the words to one of the prayers her father had taught her when she was a child.
Barrick. Barrick Eddon. Barrick . . .

Then the dream came flooding back. She tried to sit up, but little Pigeon was sprawled against her, tangled with her, and it would be too difficult to pry herself loose without waking him.

What did it mean, that vision? She had seen the flame-haired boy several times in dreams, but this last time it had been different: although she could not remember everything they had said to each other, they had shared what she remembered as a true conversation. But why had such a gift been given to her, if it truly was a gift? What did the gods intend? If the vision came from the sacred bees that she had served, the Golden Hive of Nushash, shouldn’t one of her friends from those days, like Duny, have come to her in dream instead? Why some northern boy she had never met or even seen in waking life?

Still, she could not put Barrick Eddon out of her mind, and not only because she finally knew his name. She had felt his despair as if it were her own—not as she sensed Pigeon’s unhappiness, but as if she could truly feel the stranger’s heart, as if the same blood somehow flowed through both of them. But that was impossible, of course . . .

Qinnitan felt Pigeon shift again and looked up into the blackness. She didn’t even know what time it was, night or morning, since their cabin had no windows and the noises of the crew outside did not give much away: she hadn’t yet learned the shipboard routine well enough to know the different watches by their voices and calls.

How she longed for some light! The sailors wouldn’t let her have a lamp for fear she would burn herself up, which was foolish. Qinnitan did not care much about her own life—certainly she would give it up gladly if that was the only thing that would keep her out of the hands of Sulepis—but she would not sacrifice the boy while there was even a thin hope of saving him.

Still, a candle or lamp would make the long hours of the night go faster. She could only sleep so much—although Pigeon, it seemed, could sleep anytime and as much as he wished. But Qinnitan would have preferred to have something to look at when she could not sleep. Even better would be a book—Baz’u Jev or some other poetry, anything to take her mind away from her situation.

But that would not happen, at least not as long as their captor was in charge. He was cruel and clever and seemed to have no heart whatsoever. She had tried everything—innocence, flirtation, childish terror—all had left him unmoved. How could she hope to trick a man like that, a man of cold stone? But neither could she give up.

Light. The smallest things suddenly loomed so large when they could not be obtained. Light. Something to read. Freedom to walk where she wanted. Freedom from the terror of torment and death at the hands of a mad king. Gifts that most people scarcely knew they had, but which Qinnitan would value more than all the gold in the world.

But at the moment, she just wished she had a lamp . . .

An idea came to her then—horrifying, but impossible to dislodge once it had arrived. Pigeon moaned in his sleep and squeezed her arm as though he could sense what she was thinking, but Qinnitan scarcely noticed him. The ship rose and fell at anchor, its timbers creaking softly as she lay in the lightless cabin with the boy clutched to her, scheming how they would either escape or die.

Daikonas Vo had been up before the dawn, as was his wont. He had never needed much sleep, which was a good thing: the house of his childhood, with its constant coming and going of male visitors and its drunken parties, had never provided much.

He had spoken with the ship’s captain as well as the optimarch, the leader of the soldiers on the ship, waking them both in their cabins before the first light of dawn had touched the clouds overhead and impressing on them that it would be hard to say which would be worse for them if anything happened to the girl while he was gone—the wrath of the autarch or the anger of Vo himself. Neither man liked him, but then what man did? What was important was that he had the autarch’s commission. Even better, he had seen the glimmer of fear in both men, better hidden in the captain’s angry stare than in the optimarch’s (who only outranked Vo himself by a few measures) but still there, still visible. He trusted that fear even more than he trusted their fear of the autarch. Sulepis was indeed fearsome, but he was far away. Vo was right here and he wanted them to remember that he would be coming back by nightfall.

He clambered up from the boat onto the dock and walked away without looking back, leaving the rowers to shake their heads and make the sign of pass-evil. Vo reveled in his unpopularity. It was one thing back in his own troop, when he had to live with the same men for years. He had not wished to provoke such enmity that they might all decide to band together and stab him in his sleep. But aboard ship, where he was outranked by several and had only his commission from the autarch to command respect, he wanted to keep them all at arm’s distance. The greatest threat, after all, came not from obvious enemies but from purported allies. That was how people could be caught off guard. That was how kings and autarchs were assassinated.

Agamid rose up before him in three points, the trio of hills that were its fame, that looked down on the port city nestled in the foothills below the highest hill and that sprawled all the way down to the edge of the broad bay. Even at dawn the place was bustling, its roads full of wagons coming up from the docks toward the bazaar with the morning’s catch of fish and the first goods from the trading vessels that had docked during the night. Oxen lowing, men calling to each other, children screeching and laughing as they were chased out of the way—it was exactly the kind of lively scene that made Vo wish some kind of massive ice storm would descend from the north and freeze everything, cover all the lands in a blanket of cold silence. That would be worth seeing! All these yammering, pop-eyed faces struck motionless like fish in an icy pond, and nothing to hear but the sweet, inhuman song of the wind.

Vo made his way from market stall to market stall, asking the owners where he might find an apothecary called Kimir, whose name one of the sailors had remembered from an earlier voyage and a bad case of the pox. Some of them were angry to be interrupted in their preparations for the day by someone who did not even mean to spend money, but a look into Vo’s cold eyes quickly made them respectful and eager to help. At last he found the shop in a row of dark, vine-tangled houses a few hundreds steps up the first hill, at the back edge of the bazaar.