“I wondered if you would come,” a voice said from the far side of the altar. “I thought you might be afraid.”
“I am,” he admitted, walking down the center aisle of the shrine. “But I wanted to prove to you that I didn’t kill her.”
“You needn’t prove anything to me.”
Tavis froze. This wasn’t Meriel’s voice. It was too high, too youthful. And even as he drew closer to the altar, it still sounded like it was coming to him from a distance.
“Come forward, my lord,” the voice said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
In that moment, as the last faint remnants of daylight faded from the colored glass image of the Deceiver, Tavis saw her, his breath catching in his throat.
She stood before the altar, suffused with a pale white light, as if she held Panya in her hand. Her golden hair hung loose to her waist and her eyes glowed with the soft grey Tavis remembered from their night together. She wore the same sapphire dress, the one in which she had died, though there was no blood on it, no marks from the dagger.
“Brienne,” he whispered, taking a faltering step toward her, then another. He felt tears on his face, and he wiped them away with a trembling hand. At the altar he halted and held out a hand to her.
“No,” she said, backing away. “We cannot touch. It would mean your death.”
“I don’t know that I care.” His voice sounded raw to his own ears, as though he had been crying for days. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”
She smiled shyly. It was so easy to forget that she was a wraith. “You look tired, my lord. You’ve suffered greatly since my death.”
He wondered if she knew what Aindreas had done to him. It served nothing to tell her, he decided. “I’ve missed you,” he said instead. I so wanted you to be my queen.”
“As did I, my lord.”
“Are you … ?” He hesitated, unsure of how to ask the question. “Are you in the Underrealm now?”
She seemed to take a breath—did the dead do that? After a moment she nodded.
“What is it like?”
“He forbids us from speaking of it with the living. He says such things are only for the dead to know.”
It took him a moment. Bian. She was speaking of the Deceiver.
“You’ve seen him?” he breathed.
She nodded again.
A sob escaped him. “I hope he’s been kind to you.”
“Please, my lord—”
“I’m so sorry, Brienne,” he said, his tears falling freely once more.
The spirit offered a sad smile. “For what, my lord?”
“I feared … It was my dagger that killed you. And I’ve done things recently—terrible things, that I can’t explain. So I was afraid that maybe …” He stopped, unable to say the words.
She shook her head. “No, my lord. You didn’t do this to me.”
“I didn’t save you either. I was right beside you. I must have been. And I didn’t protect you.”
“Had you tried you would have been killed.”
“I would have preferred that.”
“No, Tavis. It would have been for nothing. He would have killed both of us.”
Tavis stared at her. “He? You know who killed you?”
Brienne nodded, glowing tears appearing on her cheeks as well. “I was asleep when he came, but since my death I’ve seen it. All of it.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Too many times.”
“His name!” Tavis said. “Tell me his name!”
“I don’t know it. It was one of the servants, the man who brought us the bottle of wine we carried from the banquet.”
The young lord scoured his memory of that night, but he couldn’t remember the man of whom she spoke. “What did he look like?”
“He was tall,” she said. “And quite thin. He had long dark hair and a beard. His face was lean and his eyes pale blue. He had a pleasant face. He even smiled at me. As I said, he was a servant, but he wouldn’t have looked out of place as a member of my father’s court.”
It seemed to Tavis that she could have been describing nearly anyone. But as she continued to speak, something appeared beside her. At first it looked like little more than a swirling cloud of white mist, an ocean fog turning in the wind. Gradually, though, the mist took shape and Tavis saw a man’s face forming at its center.
“Is this him?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper once more.
The spirit glanced toward the image she had conjured. She nodded, her eyes widening, as if amazed by what she had done. “Yes. That’s the man.”
Tavis stood utterly still, staring at the face, afraid that any move he made would frighten the image away. After some time, it began to lose its form, becoming a mist once more and then fading entirely.
“I know him from somewhere,” the boy said, as much to himself as to Brienne.
“Yes, from the banquet.”
“No, that’s not it.” He closed his eyes, fighting past his grief and the haunting memory of Aindreas’s dungeon, trying to recall where he had seen that face. The answer danced before him, just beyond his grasp. It was almost as though he were chasing his own shadow. Except that he felt himself getting closer with each moment.
“My lord?”
He raised a hand, silencing her. There was a song in his mind, one that sounded familiar, though elusive and faint. But it, too, was growing clearer.
“He was a singer!” Tavis said, abruptly opening his eyes. “I heard him sing during the Revel.”
“This year’s Revel?”
Tavis nodded. “I spent much of the Revel alone, wandering the streets of Curgh, watching the dancers and listening to the musicians. I only saw this man once, and briefly at that. But I remember him because he was so good.” He paused, but only for a moment. “The
Paean
. He was singing
The Paean to the Moons.
”
“So he followed you from Curgh?”
“He must have.”
“But why did he kill me?”
Tavis gazed at her sadly. She was crying still, and he wanted more than anything to wipe the tears from her face.
“He killed you,” the boy said as gently as he could, “so that I would be executed for your murder and our houses would go to war.” There was an ache in his chest, as if Aindreas had laid one of his torches there, searing his heart. “You’re dead because we were to be married.”
“Are our houses at war?” she asked, sounding so young.
“Not yet. But I barely escaped your father’s dungeon. Even now his guards hunt for me.”
“Then you must find him, my lord. Don’t allow my death to be the cause of a civil war. Please.”
“I’ll find him,” Tavis said. “I swear it to you in the presence of Bian and any other god who will listen. I’ll find him and I’ll avenge you.”
But Brienne shook her head. “Revenge is nothing. Prove your innocence and save the kingdom. The rest makes no difference to me.
e nodded again. “I will.” In his heart, though, Tavis repeated the rest of his oath. The musician would die for what he had done. Even if it meant Tavis’s life as well.
They had been in the prison tower for only two days, but already Fotir sensed that all of them were feeling the strain. The rooms were cramped, the air sour and still. The servants, all of them, had been given two chambers, and the forty guards who had accompanied Javan to Kentigern had been placed in five others. Fotir and Xaver were in one room together and the duke had the last chamber to himself.
To his credit, Javan asked Aindreas to put him in with Xaver and the first minister so that his soldiers might have another chamber. Kentigern refused, however. He never explained why, but the reason seemed obvious enough to Fotir. The soldiers’ chambers were below them in the tower, where the men could neither see nor speak with their duke. Had Javan been allowed to give up his chamber for some of his men, they would surely have been in an adjacent room. Aindreas could not risk that. As it was, he appeared uncomfortable having Fotir so close to Javan, but his prison tower only had so many rooms, and the smallest ones could be found on the uppermost level.
During this second day of their captivity, Fotir had heard shouting coming from the tower’s lower floors. Already the men of Curgh were fighting each other or their Kentigern jailers. And today it had rained. Had the sun shone, heating the tower and its chambers as it had the day before, matters would have been far worse. No doubt they would be soon, unless Aindreas let them go.
With dusk and the arrival of some food, all had grown quiet once more. The meal didn’t consist of much—some dried meats, cheese,
bread, and fruit. It was more than a prisoner in the dungeon would have gotten, and it was offered in ample amounts. But they had eaten the same foods in the morning and at midday, and twice the previous day. This would only add to the restiveness of Javan’s men.
Xaver had spent much of the past two days staring out the narrow window of their chamber. He said even less than usual and ate little of his food, until prompted to do so by Fotir. The duke was silent as well, leaving the Qirsi to pace the small room and ponder this latest turn of events.
Aindreas had left them alone, and, aside from the guards who brought their meals, so had his ministers and men. Fotir had no wish to be interrogated, especially after seeing what the duke of Kentigern had done to Tavis. But a part of him wished that Aindreas or Shurik had come to ask them questions or threaten torture. At least then he could have been certain that Tavis and Grinsa were still safe. As it was he could only hope the very fact of their imprisonment meant that Aindreas’s search for the boy had yielded nothing.
“Fotir!” Javan called from his chamber.
The Qirsi and Xaver exchanged a look. Even more than an interrogation at the hands of Kentigern’s duke, the first minister dreaded questions about Tavis’s escape from his own duke. He knew that he could deceive Aindreas, and Shurik if he had to. He felt less certain about the MarCullet boy’s ability to lie, but he hoped that Aindreas would ignore him, seeing him as little more than a child. Javan, however, was a different matter. He loved his son in his own fashion, and Fotir knew that he would have given his life to save Tavis’s. But if he knew of Tavis’s escape, and the condition the young lord had been in when Fotir found him, not even his devotion to the boy would still his tongue.
And then there was the matter of the Weaver. Javan had become more tolerant of the Qirsi as he had grown older, thanks in part to the influence of the duchess. He seemed to appreciate the counsel offered by his underministers, and he paid them a generous wage. And Fotir felt certain that the duke had come to consider him a friend as well as a trusted advisor. But Weavers were another matter entirely, and even under these extraordinary circumstances he didn’t know how Javan would respond to the news that a Weaver had saved his son’s life.
“Yes, my lord,” he said, stepping to the door of his room and looking through its small window.
Torches burned in the corridor between their rooms, casting dim shadows on the guard standing against the wall. Javan stood at his own door, looking haggard, his eyes fixed on Aindreas’s man.
“My first minister and I need a moment alone to speak,” the duke said.
The guard glanced at one of them, then the other. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, sounding young and unsure of himself. “I was told to keep watch on all of you.”
“Is my door locked?” Javan asked.
“Well, yes, my—”
“Is his?”
“Yes. But—”
“Then you have nothing to fear. Go down and talk to your friends for a while. By the time you return, we’ll be done.”
The man shook his head. “I have my orders, my lord.”
“You know who I am?”
“Of course, my lord. You’re the duke of Kentigern.”
“And you know who I’ll be a year from now?”
The guard swallowed, then nodded. “You’ll be king, my lord.”
“That’s right. So what do you suppose you ought to do when your future king gives you an order?”
Fotir had to keep himself from laughing at what he saw on the man’s face. For some time the guard stood there, chewing his lip, looking from one door to the other. Finally he checked the locks on both doors and with a last furtive glance toward Javan he walked to the stairs.
“I’ll be right below you, my lord. If you try to escape, I’ll know it.”
“I understand,” Javan said solemnly. “You have my word as your next king. We’ll be here when you return.”
The man nodded, as if satisfied. Then he started down the stairs.
Javan waited until his footsteps had died away before speaking. “He won’t be gone for long,” the duke said, meeting Fotir’s gaze again. “So I’ll make this quick. I’m guessing that you’re not telling me all you know. I think I understand why. But I need to know if Tavis is safe.”
Fotir took a breath. He would have preferred not to tell the duke anything at all. But Javan deserved this much.
“To the best of my knowledge, he is, my lord.”