The day had turned out fine and sunny, with a fresh warm wind off the bay, and the attendants began rolling back the curtains of the pavilion as Briony arrived with the rest of her guards and Prince Eneas, who had brought a small company of his own men—“the Temple Dogs,” as he called them. Ferras Vansen thought it a showy name for what was only another group of soldiers, after all. He had never held with the Syannese custom of self-glorying nicknames.
He approached Princess Briony, bowed, and said, “The guards are all in place, Highness. You will be as safe here as men can make you.”
To his alarm, she laughed. He looked up, terrified he would see mockery, but the look on her face seemed to be a fond one. “Captain Vansen, we will have to return to the subject of your promotion soon. If you remain with the royal guard, you will drain the resources of the kingdom protecting me. I think I see three pentecounts of soldiers here!”
He felt himself flushing and cursed silently. “Your Highness is the heart of Southmarch. You have come through too much for us to risk losing you now.”
“He is right, Princess,” said Eneas in his soft midlander accent.
Vansen was doing his best not to hate the man. From everything he had heard, the Syannese prince was not only an honorable man and an admirable soldier but had been a gentleman and true friend to Briony as well; if Vansen had not feared him so much, he would have wished the chance to know him better. But Eneas had every right to marry Briony, while Ferras Vansen, however she might feel about him, had none. Even now, with his heart more firmly hers than ever before, Vansen felt certain she would do the politic thing—in truth, the only sensible thing—and marry the prince of Syan.
And then I will have to leave this place I love, as well as the only woman I desire.
He did his best to push away self-pity.
But what can be done, after all? I am a soldier, she is my queen—the heights are not meant for such as me. At least I have the sun and the wind back again. . . .
How long had he spent entombed in deathly twilight or under a terrible reach of stone? He had gone so long without open sky and bright sun in the year past that he had forgotten the simple goodness of its warmth on his skin, as well as the bewitching tang of sea air which to a boy of the distant hills still seemed a kind of magic, the stuff of his father’s stories.
He must have missed it,
Vansen thought.
Must have missed the sea when he left it and his home behind.
A thought was in his head now, and he had to dig at it carefully to find its true shape.
Even more, he must have loved my mother very much to give it up.
“’Ware the ship!” shouted someone from the wall. Vansen turned to see a small, covered boat bobbing toward them over the swells, the oars on each side moving like the legs of a water beetle. It was painted and gilded in the full glory of the Xixian colors, a huge carving of a spread-winged falcon perched on its prow as if trying to lift the entire craft from the water and fly away with it.
A fitting symbol,
Vansen thought with a twinge of satisfaction.
They thought they had the strength to take what they wanted here, but they underestimated the will of the Marchmen . . . especially the courage of the Funderlings. And now they come to us as humble as you please.
When the boat had been drawn up to the makeshift dock, built from the last stones that remained of the causeway, a group of Xixian soldiers in leopard-spotted cloaks filed off it and lined up on either side of the causeway, followed by a slow-moving figure in an elaborate ceremonial robe. As this lean old fellow made his way forward, propped on the arm of a youthful servant, the soldiers still on the boat began to lift out a large, covered litter.
The old man reached the front of the pavilion where Briony sat with Eneas standing protectively beside her. The prince of Syan looked so much the handsome royal husband already that Vansen could have happily seen him shot with an arrow. The Xixian made an elaborate bow that did not quite cross over into actual humility. Then the youthful servant made a shrill announcement that his stumbling words suggested he had been forced to memorize, “I parsent His Revered Seff . . . Revered
Self
, the Wise Elder, Paramount Mis . . . Minister Pinimmon Vash.”
“You are safe in our company, Minister Vash,” Briony told the old man. “And so are all who travel with you.”
The paramount minister pressed his hands together and bowed to her again. “Your Highness is too kind. Before we begin our formal discussion, may I take this moment to extend my deepest sorrows on the death of your father? I came to know him well in the last months—almost we were friends, I would say ...”
“Friends?” Briony’s voice had lost its smooth strength. “Your master killed my father, Minister Vash. Is this not hypocritical, to feign sorrow?”
“It is not feigned, Highness,” he said with the ease of a veteran courtier. “And it is about my late . . . master that we wish to speak.”
“We?”
“My present monarch . . . and myself. But I must beg your indulgence. Autarch Prusus has certain frailties that make it difficult for him to speak clearly. We hope you will indulge us and let me assist him.”
“How do we know you will not simply say what you wish—that you are not the true ruler of Xis now?” demanded Eneas.
“Oh, my master can speak your tongue,” the old man assured him. “He is a scholar. But it is difficult for him.” At this, Vash turned and clapped his hands. The litter was carried forward and set down in front of the pavilion. When the curtains were drawn back even Briony had a difficult time hiding her surprise.
The new autarch was a simpleton, or so it appeared, his head lolling, a sheen of drool on his chin. Even his legs and arms seemed unwilling to be led by such a creature and seemed to be struggling clumsily to remove themselves from his trunk.
“Forgive me, but what is this?” demanded Prince Eneas. “Is this a jest or a trick, Xixian?”
“Please, Highness,” Briony said. “Do not be hasty. Autarch Prusus, do you understand me?”
The man in the litter nodded, a complicated affair of wags and hitches.
“And do you truly speak our tongue?”
The autarch made a long series of stammering noises. Vansen actually heard a word he understood. “ . . .
Dignity
.”
“He says he does, and he apologizes,” Vash said. “The Golden One says the gods gave him more wit than dignity.”
Briony smiled a hard smile. “Then he would be an ill fit in most courts, where it is generally the other way around—but come into our tent and we will speak. There is no forgiveness in my heart for Xis, but I want no more fighting if it can be avoided.”
“Please, Princess Briony,” said ancient Vash, “it was your father’s own scheme that brought Prusus and I together—he alone saw through the scotarch’s outer seeming and made me aware as well. That is why at the last I found a few sympathetic men to help me carry the scotarch and we escaped. That is why we did not die in the caverns beneath your castle. It was your father’s cleverness that saved us.”
“Do not think to flatter me with what my father did while he struggled for his life—a life your master eventually took from him.” Vansen could see that Briony was fighting to stay calm. He longed more than anything to be able to put his hand upon her, to let her know she was not alone—but of course he couldn’t. “From what I have been told about your people, it is scarcely worth our while to negotiate. As soon as you return to Xis, this man ...” she gestured to the new autarch, who was being helped to drink watered wine by a servant, “will be replaced by another member of your mad royal family. So why should I not simply leave you all to make your way across Eion by land and let things fall out as they will?” Her smile this time was even harder. “I do not think you would have a happy time leading your survivors through Syan and Hierosol.”
Vash nodded, but it was plain he too was nettled. “Yes, and more innocents would be killed. I do not speak of our soldiers here, Highness. We invaded you . . . or rather, the previous autarch forced us to invade. And ordinarily you would be correct—Prusus would have only a short time to rule before a successor was chosen. But he and I think we have a better plan. There is an old law among our people that the scotarch will rule until a successor has been chosen. However, if the autarch is not dead but simply gone, the successor cannot be chosen until five years have passed.” Vash smiled. For all his age he had the confident smile of a younger man. “We will be able to do much in five years, I think, to change that which we like least about our country. For one, if you let us take passage from here, we will withdraw our army from Hierosol as well.”
“Truly?” said Eneas. His skepticism was plain. “Why should you do that?”
Prusus abruptly spoke up. Vansen could make out an occasional word now, but much of it still sounded like animal noises.
“He says, ‘Because conquest is expensive, and maintaining it is more so,’” the old man explained. “Xis has overstretched its boundaries and resources. We have enough to do taking care of our empire in Xand. All of the adventuring here in the north was the obsession of Sulepis, all bent toward what he thought to do here, in Southmarch.” Vash bowed. “But Prusus says that he, who is scarcely a man, has no illusions that he is fit to be a god. He thinks he can be a goodly autarch, however, for as long as the gods give him to rule.”
“You promise this?” Briony said, looking not at Vash now but at Prusus. “If we let you and your men take ship—and you Xixians will pay for those ships and pay for everything that goes upon them—then you promise you will withdraw your armies from the rest of Eion?”
Prusus’ head wagged several times before he could get out the words. They were hard to understand, but not impossible.
“Yiy ... I ... do. I ... puh ... rah ... misss.”
“You and Minister Vash may return to your camp in the hills. My counselors, Prince Eneas, and I must talk together.”
“I am disposed to trust them, not because I believe everything they say—Vash, it is clear to me, is a man who has long acquaintance with the manipulation of truth—but because I see no choice.” In the privacy of the tent she had taken off her headpiece. A sheen of sweat flecked her brow. Vansen realized he was staring.
“I do not like it, Briony,” said Prince Eneas. “Don’t do it. I think it is a mistake.”
She gave him enough of a nettled look to make Ferras Vansen happier than he had been in hours. “I’m grateful for your advice, Eneas, but please remember, this is Southmarch soil, and although I will never be able to repay all you have done for me and my people, I am still the mistress here, even if I have not yet been crowned.”
She truly has changed,
Vansen realized.
Most of the petty angers have gone. What remains is just and necessary . . . even queenly.
Briony frowned. “In any case, what can we do? Imprison them all? Execute them . . . ?”
As she spoke a guard came in, clearly in haste. He bent and whispered his message to Vansen, who immediately stepped forward.
“Princess,” he said, “my men say that a boat is coming, not from the Southmarch mainland but across the bay from Oscastle ...”
“Surely that is not so unusual, Captain Vansen? Or is it a warship?”
“No, but ...” He did not know what to say. “Perhaps you should come and see.”
It took only a short time to throw back the curtains again and open the pavilion to the blue sky and the green bay all around. The Marrinswalk ship was impossible to mistake, a single-masted cog of the type usually meant for fast travel and vital news, but what caught Vansen’s attention were the three flags she flew. One was the owl of the Marrinswalk’s ducal family, but she also showed the black and silver of the Eddons and another pennant with a strange sigil that Vansen did not recognize.
“By the gods,” said Steffens Nynor, his wispy hair a little disarranged with drink and the heat of the day, “they’re flying the battle standard of the Southmarch master of arms. But we
have
no master of arms. Not since ...”
“Do not say it,” Briony told him. “Do not tempt the gods to cruelty or tricks.”
The ship anchored a short distance out in the bay and a boat rowed across to the causeway and tied up on the opposite side from the Xixian falcon boat, which was just raising anchor. As if in studied imitation of the southern delegation, this boat too disgorged a man in dark traveling clothes and a broad hat; the man at the front of the landing boat was even darker of skin than Pinimmon Vash.
“Oh, merciful Zoria, is that truly Dawet?” Briony said. She stood up and waved her hand. “Master Dan-Faar, is it you?”
The newcomer waved from the end of the causeway, but Vansen thought it a subdued gesture. The dark man climbed out as the boat was still being tied and walked up the road toward the pavilion.
Briony clapped her hands. “I am so pleased you have come to us!” she called. “I feared something had happened to you—that you would never see the happy result of all our labors together in Syan.”
The man Vansen had last seen as the envoy of Ludis Drakava mounted the wooden steps to the pavilion. He bowed and kissed Briony’s hand. “I rejoice to see you back on your throne again, Princess.” He turned and made a bow to the prince as well. “Your Royal Highness.”
Eneas and Ferras Vansen looked at each other, unhappy with the arrival of this handsome newcomer and with Briony’s obvious affection for him.
“But why did you come in such a manner, Master Dan-Faar, flying the flag of the master of arms?” Briony asked him. “Do you seek to fill the position?” She laughed, but suddenly looked unsure. “And why are you dressed so, all in black? Has something happened?
Dawet was still on his knees, as if he were too weary to rise. He took a square of parchment from his cloak and offered it to her. “Here, Princess. This is for you.”