Shadowrise (12 page)

After the autarch returned to his cabin, King Olin remained at the rail, staring silently at the water. Pinimmon Vash, whose knees were throbbing now too, dared not move yet for fear the northern king would notice him. At last, Olin turned and let his guards lead him back toward his small cabin. For a moment Vash could see the foreign king’s face clearly, its skin so slack and its hue so ghastly pale that Olin might have already been dead. In fact, the foreigner looked as though he had seen not only his own death, but the end of everything he loved.

Pinimmon Vash, who had never wasted a drop of pity on others, thought of Olin’s bloodless face and found himself hoping that the gods would show mercy on the northern king and let him die in his sleep that night.

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

 

 

“ N
O.” THE BARMAID SLAMMED the coin down on the wet, greasy board and walked away.

Matt Tinwright wanted her to take it, but he had to admit to a certain ambivalence. It was the last of his money, a single silver sturgeon borrowed—along with the three he’d already spent in the last fortnight—after a heroic wheedling of old Puzzle, a feat of flattery, exaggeration, and outright sniveling that would be celebrated among the guild of beggars for centuries to come. Not that Tinwright had exaggerated everything he had said to get Puzzle to take his coins out of the odiferous little bag he kept in his boot: he really did need the money, and it really was a matter of life or death.

“Please, Brigid,” he said quietly as the barmaid passed him again. There weren’t many people in the Quiller’s Mint at this time of the day, and those who were would doubtless not know the difference between voices inside their head or outside, but it was not the sort of thing one talked about loudly. “Please. There is no one else who can help me.”

“And I don’t care.” She stopped in front of him, fists on hips, and bent forward so that her face was only a hand’s-breadth from his own. Normally he would have been distracted by the amount of bosom this pose displayed, but even his most dominating instincts were at the moment shriveled by fear of his awesome responsibility. “My brothers helped you get her out of her rooms and I helped you get her over to the new place—I even carried the snobby cow while you ran off and piddled your pantaloons.”

“A base lie!” he said, then lowered his voice. “I had to go and distract those men. They were priests—clerics from the castle’s counting house. They are sober men and would have known right away something was not right.” He remembered the terror of that moment, hearing them coming down the passage as he and the serving wench were dragging a dazed, barefoot Elan M’Cory to the room he had rented and prepared for her near Skimmers Lagoon. It had been even more frightening than the time he had thought he was about to be executed by Avin Brone: that time he had not known why he was in trouble, but this time Tinwright had helped a young noblewoman poison herself—although without letting her actually achieve that goal. Now he had to keep the recovering Elan hidden from Hendon Tolly and the others. Almost being caught like that—well, he wouldn’t admit it to Brigid, but the state of his clothing
had
been a near thing.

“You know, it’s a funny thing, Matty, but I still don’t care.” Brigid tossed her curly hair. “I’m not interested in your problems anymore. I’ve got a new man and he’s got money. Not just drips and drabs like you and that poor old stick you cadge yours from, but a good living. He’s got a house in Oscastle, and a shop, and he has nice clothes and a walking stick with a handle made of real whale ivory . . .”

“And a wife back home?” Tinwright said, none too nicely.

“What of it? She’s a sour old cow—he told me so. He’ll set me up in a place of my own and I won’t have to live in this bloody place anymore and let Conary feel my bubs just to earn my wages.”

“But Brigid, I’m in terrible trouble . . . !”

“And who put you there, Matt Tinwright? You did. And who’s got to get you out? None other than the same person. Learn that lesson and you’ll be halfway to being a man instead of a boy and a fool.”

She turned and walked briskly away, but only got a few steps before she turned back. Her face had softened a little. “I don’t wish you harm, Matty. You and I had our laughs, and you’re not a bad sort. But you can’t build a house on water. You have to find a place to stand.”

She left him then. For all his years of chasing the poetic muse, he could not think of a word to say.

 

“Oh. It’s you.” Her dark eyes seemed to take up half her face. Elan M’Cory was frighteningly thin—she had not eaten a full meal since she had taken the tanglewife’s potion many days ago. “I thought it was that cruel, red-faced woman.”

Tinwright sighed. “Brigid is not cruel.”

“Do not defend her just because you have had your way with her. I am not a child—I know how the world is wagged. And she
is
cruel. She tried to pour soup down my throat. She nearly drowned me.”

“She was trying to get you to eat. You must eat, Elan.” He sat down on the end of the bed. It was a cheap, frail thing and it creaked under his weight. “Please, my lady, you will make yourself ill . . .”

“Make myself ill? Who was it that did this to me, I ask you? Who tricked me when I would have ended it all?”

Tinwright hung his head. She had been like this since she had awakened, furious and argumentative or sad and silent, but always miserable. No wonder Brigid refused to come anymore. He couldn’t blame himself for not wanting to see the woman he loved take her own life, but he certainly could have wished things might have gone better. “I did,” was all he said. It was easier not to argue. As it was, he heard her doleful voice in his head for hours after he left her. He had not been able to write a line in days, and just at a time when he had begun to think he was actually finding his way.

“All I asked of you was the smallest thing—a gift of kindness.” She closed her eyes and let herself sink back into the cushion. “You say you love me, say it over and over again, but did you bring me what I wanted? A droplet of soul’s peace, that was all I asked. A simple thing.”

“It is no simple thing to kill someone,” he said. “Even less so when you care for that person as much as I care for you, Lady Elan.”

She opened her eyes again, and for a moment he thought she would shout at him, but the wildness went out of her face and her eyes filled with tears. “If your love and concern could have saved me, Matt Tinwright, it would have saved me already. But I am damned. I belong to Kernios and his dark country.”

“No, you do not!” He lifted his hand to thump it down on the bedclothes, then thought better of it. “You were misused by a villainous man. If it were in my power to kill Hendon Tolly, I would, but I am not a swords-man. I am a poet—and sometimes, I think, not much of that, either.”

If he hoped she would disagree with him he was disappointed. “It is so . . . so hard to be alive,” she said quietly. “A nightmare I cannot wake from. I sometimes think we are all Death’s servants and he only lends us to the temporary service of other masters.”

He hated when she spoke this way. “But you are safe now, Elan. Hendon Tolly is not even looking for you.”

A little of the hardness came back to her face. “Oh, Matthias Tinwright, you are a fool! Of course he searches for me. Not because he misses me, or even because he hates me—I could live with that—but because I
belonged
to him, and he does not let anyone steal from him.”

“You do not . . .”

She held up her hand. “Please. It does no good to say such things—
you do not know
.” Her expression changed again, became altogether more disturbing. There was nothing hard about her now—she looked absolutely defenseless, a soft-bodied thing with its shell torn away. “He has a mirror. He can . . . there are . . . there are things inside it. Things that . . . laugh . . . and . . . and talk. They know terrible secrets.” A shiver ran up her frail chest, made her hands shake where she clasped them before her. “He made me look into it . . .”

Tinwright could not speak, could not even move when what he wanted most of all was to take her in his arms and protect her from the vile memories that troubled her so, but the sheer, haunted hopelessness in her voice made his limbs seem heavy and bloodless.

“He made me look,” she said, whispering now. “He took me down into a basement room and held my head. It . . . it spoke to me. That thing spoke to me.
It knew who I was!
It knew things about me that no one should know, not even Hendon Tolly—not even my mother and father! I tried to run away but I couldn’t. Whatever lived in there, it held me and it played with me like . . . like a cat who dandles a mouse, claps hold of it, takes off its paw, lets it run, then catches it up again. I . . . I . . .” She was weeping wholeheartedly now, but did not even raise her hand to wipe her face. “I do not want to live in such a world as this, Matt Tinwright. A world that has such . . . filth, such terrible things hiding behind every looking glass . . . every ref lection . . .”

Tinwright found his voice at last. “It was a trick . . . something he did to frighten you . . .”

She shook her head, tears still running down her cheeks. “No. He is frightened of it too. I think that was why he took me to it. It is like a beast in a cage. He thought to keep it as a pet, but it is demanding. He was going to let it feed on me. That is another reason he will not lightly let me go, Matt. I was going to keep the beast . . . occupied.”

 

It was some time before Tinwright could calm Elan M’Cory enough for her to take a little cold broth and then fall asleep. It was a relief to see her put aside the worst of her cares and rest, but how long could he sit here and guard her? How much time could he take for these secret errands before someone in Hendon Tolly’s court noticed his absences? The Inner Keep was packed with spies and sycophants, all of them fiercely jealous of their master’s attentions—some of them even jealous of poor Matt Tinwright, who had never had a day’s luck that didn’t turn immediately into horse dung!

If Brigid won’t come, I must find someone to help me with Elan. But who can I trust? Just as important, who can I afford?
He looked down at the silver sturgeon, which barring a miracle on the order of Onir Diotrodos and the jars of beer, would have to last him for a fortnight. It seemed impossible. Anyone low enough to work for such wages would recognize Elan’s status, sniff Tinwright’s need for secrecy, and make him out as a prime candidate for blackmail. He needed someone with no money and few scruples, but who would not immediately turn around and stab him in the back, or who would at least wait a little while before doing so.

On the face of it, it seemed impossible. To his sorrow, though, Tinwright knew better.

There’s only one person like that in all of Southmarch,
he thought with a heavy heart.
My mother.

But before he could hire her, he’d have to find her.

For Briony, despite being surrounded by the comfort and pageantry of the Syannese court, the days crawled by. She had no cause to cause to complain about how she was treated—she was given accommodations suited to her station, a suite of chambers in the Broadhall Palace’s long eastern wing with windows overlooking the river. She had also been gifted with serving maids and ladies-in-waiting and chests full of jewelry and clothes to wear, all chosen, she was told, by the king’s favorite, Lady Ananka. Briony had been raised on nursery tales of jealous witches and evil fairies: before wearing any of the clothes she carefully searched them for poison pins.

The nobles of the court treated her with deference when they saw her, although in truth she did not leave her rooms very often at first. It was too strange for her, this world of not-this, not-that in which she found herself—not a real princess, but not a simple player among other players either (although at times she certainly felt herself to be playing a role again). It was hard to exchange pleasantries with the pampered, overdressed folk of Enander’s glittering court and not feel that by doing so, by biding her time, she was somehow betraying her own family and folk. But in a foreign court and without trustworthy friends she could only snatch at those few bits of news she could get from her home. The fairy-siege, she learned, still continued, but since it had taken on a more peaceful cast in the last months the Syannese people thought of Southmarch less and less. Tolly still reigned there as the nominal protector of the king’s youngest child, Alessandros. And Briony herself was still a mystery—some people in Southmarch thought she had been kidnapped, perhaps even by the Autarch of Xis. Until recently, the rumor most believed in Tessis was that she had been killed and her body hidden, but her appearance at Broadhall Palace had taken some of the wind from that particular story’s sails.