(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (27 page)

He had run until he was beyond the immediate reach of the faceless shapes, the whisperers, but he knew they were still somewhere behind him, flowing through the honeycombed rooms, sniffing for him like dogs. He was in a wing of the castle he didn’t know, chamber after chamber of dusty, unfamiliar objects flung around without order or care. A broken orrery stood on a table, metal arms bent so that they protruded in all directions like the quills of some spiky creature. Carpets and tapestries were draped across each other, bunched and crumpled at the edges, even spread onto the timbered ceiling so that it was somehow difficult to tell which way was up, and they were beginning to curl with the rising heat.

He stopped. Someone—or something—was calling his name.

“Barrick! Where are you?”

He realized with a spasm of terror that it was not only the shadow-men who were looking for him, the men of smoke and blood, but something else as well. Something dark and tall and singular. Something that had been hunting him a long, long time.

His swift walk became a run. Moments later it became a wild, headlong dash. Still his own name floated to him like a lonely echo from one benighted mountaintop to another, or like the cry of some lost soul stranded upon the moon.

“Barrick? Come back!”

He was in a long corridor open on one side, he realized, sprinting through a gallery that dropped away next to him, a dizzying plunge to the stone flags just a misstep away. All the castle must be afire now—here the tapestries were burning at the bottom edges, flames beginning to lick their way up the stylized hunting scenes and representations of adventuring gods and ancient kings seated in glory.

“Barrick?”

He pulled up, heart speeding. The flames were climbing higher, the gallery filling with black smoke. He could feel a baking heat all down his right side that hurt his skin. He wanted to run, but something was moving in the smoke ahead of him, something stained red and orange by leaping firelight.

“I am angry. Very angry.”

Barrick’s heart felt as though it might crack his breastbone. The shape trudged out of the murk, smoke dripping down its length like water, fire curling in the dark beard.

“You shouldn’t run from me, boy.”
His father’s stare was dull and empty, cloudy as the eyes of a dead fish in a bucket.
“Shouldn’t run. It makes me angry with you.”

For all her discontent with her clothing, Briony was glad for once that Moina and Rose had laced her so tightly, glad that her embroidered stomacher was stiff as armor. It seemed to be all that held her upright on her battered wooden chair—the chair that at least for this mad moment had become the throne of all the March Kingdoms.

Did anyone else feel the same as she did? Did everyone? Were all these castle folk in their ornate finery no more than confused souls hiding inside costumes, as the hard shells of snails protected the helpless, naked things that lived within them?

“He says
what?
” She was frightened again, even if she forced herself not to show it. She fought hard to keep her eyes on the lord constable, not to let her glance dart into the shadows in anxious search for the assassins and traitors who had seemed all around her in the terrible hour of Kendrick’s death, but whose phantom presences had been mostly absent since Shaso’s capture. “But we found the bloody knife—surely you have told him that. What does he claim?”

“He will not tell us anything else.” Avin Brone looked almost as tired as Chaven had, his great body sagging. He would clearly have liked to sit down, but Briony did not call for a stool. “He simply says he did not kill your brother or his guards.”

“Pay no attention to this nonsense, Briony.” Gailon Tolly’s anger seemed genuine, and for once it was not aimed at her. “Would an innocent man not tell everything he knew? Shaso is taken by shame, that is all. Though I am surprised it could happen with such a villain.”

“But what if he is telling the truth, Duke Gailon?” Briony turned back to Brone. “Or what if he is not the only murderer? It still seems strange he should kill all three by himself.”

“Not so strange, Highness,” suggested the lord constable. “He is a deadly fighter, and they would not have been prepared—he would have caught them all unsuspecting. He likely stabbed the first guard and set on the second in a mere moment. Once the second guard was killed, he then attacked your unarmed brother.”

Briony felt queasy. She couldn’t bear to think too deeply about it—about Kendrick alone, helpless, holding up his arms, perhaps defending himself against a man he had known and trusted all his life. “And you still say there is no one else in the castle who could have done it, or even aided Shaso in the murder?”

“I have not said that, my lady. I’ve said that we cannot find any such person, despite our hardest labors, but it is not certain we ever could. Even at night, hundreds are quartered inside this keep. Captain Vansen and his guards have spoken to almost everyone, searched nearly every room, but there are ten hundred more that enter here during the hours of day who might have hidden, then escaped after the murder in the alarm and confusion.”

“Vansen.” She snorted, but then anger overcame her. “There are not ten hundred in the whole
world
who would want to kill my brother! But there are some, and I suspect I know many of them.” The courtiers stirred nervously and their whispers became even quieter. Many fewer were in the throne room than usual: dozens were keeping to their rooms or houses in fear, both of assassins and the fever. “Ten hundred, Lord Brone—that is wordplay! Are you telling me that the simpleton boy who brings the turnips from the Marrinswalk wagons might be one of Kendrick’s murderers? No, it is someone with something to gain.”

Brone frowned and cleared his throat. “You do me . . . and yourself . . . a disservice, Highness. Of course, what you say is true. However, though we must suspect almost everyone, we must insult no one needlessly. Would you have me mew up every noble who might be thought to benefit from the prince regent’s death? Is that your command?” He looked around the room and a sudden silence fell. The courtiers looked startled as geese caught in the open by a thunderstorm.

A part of her would indeed have liked to see all these idle, overdressed, and overpainted folk made to answer for themselves, but Briony knew that was just rage and despair. One or two of them might well be guilty, might be part of a conspiracy with Shaso, but the rest would then be blameless and would rightly resent ill-treatment. The landowning nobility were not famous for their patience and humility. And if the Eddons did not have the support of the nobility, then the Eddons were nothing.

We’ve lost Father and Kendrick. I won’t lose our throne as well.

“Of course I don’t want that,” she said, measuring her words. “Rough times make for rough jokes, Lord Avin, so I forgive you, but please do not instruct me. I may be green in years, but in my father’s absence and my brother Barrick’s illness, I
am
the throne of Southmarch.”

Something flickered in Brone’s eyes, but he bowed his head. “I stand fairly chastised, Highness.”

Briony’s strength was failing. She badly needed to lie down and sleep—she had not had more than a few unbroken hours of it for several nights. She wanted to see her twin well, and her other brother alive again. Most of all, she wanted her father back, someone who would hold her and protect her. She took a slow, deep breath. It did not matter what she wanted, of course: there would be no rest any time soon.

“No, Lord Brone, we all are chastised,” she said. “The gods humble us all.”

The face was twisted into something almost unrecognizable, but there was no question who it was. Barrick turned and ran. Smoke and flames swirled around him as though he had tumbled down one of the rooftop chimneys, or down a gash in the earth toward the regions of fire. His father came after, boots echoing on the flags, a fuming Kernios with beard ablaze and voice booming.

“Come here, child! You are making me very angry!”

The downward course of the stairs twisted in a great arc like the limbs of a wind-tortured tree, as blurry in the smoke as something seen beneath deep water, but it was his only escape and he did not hesitate. For a moment his feet were solid beneath him, but then a hand clawed at his back, snagged in his garments, tried to grapple him.

“Stop . . . !”

And then his feet were out from under him and he was tumbling down the steps beside the abyss, sliding, flung like a pebble, thumped and rattled down against hard stone until his breath was out of his body and his brains were out of his head. As he fell the voices of the whispering shadow-men became a shout, a roar, and all he could think was,
Not again!

Oh, gods, not again . . . !

 

He woke, shivering and weeping. He did not know where he was or even who he was.

A round man with a somber, kindly face bent over him, but for an instant it was that other face that he saw again, that familiar face twisted into a hateful mask and bearded in flame, and he shrieked and struck out. In his weakness his hand barely twitched; the shriek was a stifled moan.

“Rest,” the man said. Chaven. His name was Chaven. “You have a fever, but there are people caring for you.”

Fever?
he thought.
It is no fever.
The castle was on fire and they were under attack. Evil flowed inside the walls like poisoned blood in a dying man.
Briony!
He remembered her suddenly, and as if in imitation of their collateral birth, with her name his own came back as well.
She has to know—she must be told.
He strained again to make a noise, this time to speak. “. . . Briony . . .”

“She is well, Highness. Drink this.” A beautiful coolness was poured into his throat, but he could not immediately remember how to swallow. When he had finished sputtering and coughing, and had taken a little more, Chaven’s cool hand touched his forehead. “Now sleep, Highnness.”

Barrick tried to shake his head. How could they not understand? He felt the darkness reach out to drag him down. He had to tell them about the shadow-men who swarmed the castle, about the fires. They had been hiding here for years, but now they had come out in full force. Perhaps the family’s enemies were only a few chambers away by now! And he also had to tell Briony about Father—what if he came to her? What if she did not know, did not understand, and let him in?

The darkness was pulling, sucking at him, making him liquid.

“Tell Briony . . .” he managed, then slid beneath the surface of light once more, down into the burning depths.

Young Raemon Beck was finding it hard to think of anything but Helmingsea. They were still two days west of Southmarch and his home lay another two days’ ride beyond that, but he had been away for a month and a half and it was hard not to think of his wife and his two small boys, hard to keep his eagnerness under control.

Easier when we were in Settland and still weeks away from home
, he thought.
Easier when we had things to occupy us, bargaining, buying, selling. Now there is nothing left to do but ride and think. . . .