Tad Williams - Shadowheart

“I… I am no lord, Princess.”

“A small enough matter. You would not have escaped your heroics without a title and some land in any case, Captain. Shall I make you a marquis? Though I fear you will not relish being a lord. You don’t seem like the type to enjoy the preening and scurrying of court life.”

“It terrifies me.”

She laughed a little despite herself. “Poor Captain Vansen. It does seem a terrible thing to do to you. ...”

He had been looking at the floor. Now he raised his gaze to hers and Briony felt a little shock. Ferras Vansen’s dark eyes were fiercer than she had ever seen—fiercer than she would have imagined possible, like something that can retreat no farther and must now turn and fight.

“Why do you do this to me, Lady? Why?”

“What do you mean, Captain Van… ?”

“This! I mean this! This way of talking to me. I liked it better when you hated me. At least then being lashed again and again was no surprise. But now… you say you are grateful, you praise my deeds, but all the time you act like… like ...” And although he was as flushed as she had ever seen him, anger mottling his cheeks and his forehead, he stopped suddenly. A moment later he said, in a far quieter voice, “Your pardon, Highness. I had no right.”

“My pardon will not be given—not until you tell me how it is that I act.”

“Please…”

“No, Captain Vansen, I insist. In fact, I command you—tell me how I act.”

His eyes roved in desperation as though there might be some way out of the trap into which he had delivered himself, but all of the guards were working hard to seem as though they weren’t listening, that they weren’t even aware other people were in the room.

Vansen squared himself, took a breath, and said: “You act like a spoiled child given a pet with which she has already grown bored. Instead of simply sending it away when it displeases her, she teases and torments it only for her own amusement.” His voice was thick now. “That is what you do, Briony Eddon. That is the part you act with me.”

Part of her was enraged that he should speak that way to her, but close behind it stood a larger part that was horrified to realize what she had done to this kind, good man. “But I did not ...” She could not make the words come out properly. “I never ...”

Vansen, who a moment before had looked so resigned that he might have been a prisoner atop the gallows, now took a step nearer to her. He had a look on his face she could not understand—it looked something like exhilaration but also something like terror. “And I will say more,” he told her in a breathless rush. “No matter what Avin Brone thinks, and even if you yourself do feel something like the gratitude you profess, I can never be the lord constable, nor could I hold a noble’s place in your court—or, if it comes to it, be the captain of your guard. So, with gratitude for what your family have given me and the kindness you yourself have shown me… at times… I must resign my commission.” He pulled his gloves from his belt and laid them on the floor at her feet, then unstrapped his sword and set it beside them. “May the gods watch over Your Highness and the throne of the March Kingdoms.”

He had gone only a few steps before she called to him. “But why? Why would you turn your back on the rewards you have justly earned?”

He turned slowly, knowing that what he said now could never be unsaid. “Because I couldn’t bear working within sight of you the rest of my life, Briony Eddon. I’ve loved you from almost the first moment I saw you, knowing also that moment that the gods in Heaven must be laughing until they wept… because who was I? A mere soldier.”

“No! A brave man,” she said, because it was so much what she had been thinking. “A kind man. A good man.”

“Why do you speak kindly now when you wouldn’t before, Princess?” He no longer seemed to care. “Pity for a fool?”

“I’m the fool, I think.” She laughed. “But you are a fool, too, Captain! Oh, merciful Zoria, I thought you would never speak your heart. How could I let myself love a man who was too frightened to tell me how he felt?”

“You care… for me… ?” She thought he might laugh, or burst out into some kind of great oration like a character in a play, but instead he suddenly called out, “Guards! Go outside and guard the door for a short while. I have a sudden concern about the security of the outer passage.”

“You don’t have to send everyone away ...” Briony began as the soldiers made their way out into the hall. Briony’s heart was beating fast. She felt a strong urge to giggle like a child. “But I do,” Vansen said. “Even if they are discreet, it’s asking too much that they must pretend to be blind and stupid as well. We common folk still have our pride.” He stepped up onto the dais. “And you may send me to the headsman for it tomorrow, Princess, but I must kiss you—I must! I’ve waited so long ...”

At first Briony didn’t speak, because it was all so strange and unexpected that she feared it might vanish if the moment was interrupted. She could scarcely breathe as Vansen reached out and drew her up from her chair, but the feel of his warm breath on her face made her realize how far she had kept from him all these months. “Yes, kiss me, Vansen,” she said at last. “Kiss me, please!”

Barrick Eddon scarcely heard Aesi’uah’s questions as they walked back through the Raven’s Gate and into the outer keep. The guards in the gatehouse carefully looked the other way as the small procession passed, though Barrick could see both curiosity and fear in their postures. It might have been worse, but Barrick had chosen only the most manlike of the Qar to accompany him.

“Are you angry with us or your other people, Barrick Eddon?” the eremite asked him.

They stole Sanasu—she who was to have the Fireflower, the Fireflower voices reminded him—as if he needed reminding. They killed her brother who would have been her husband.

“It doesn’t matter.” He had no answers, and he had more pressing things in his head just now. When he had reached out to lay the offering on his father’s coffin, he had felt a sharp stab of pain in his hand—pain he had not felt for so long he had forgotten how bad it was. It had receded again, but he could not stop thinking about it. Why now, after all this time, should he feel it again?

Barrick and the Qar continued across the outer keep in silence and into the shade of the harbor wall between the West Lagoon and the new walls. The gates to Funderling Town were guarded by more of Vansen’s men, but Barrick’s onetime companion had prepared the soldiers carefully, and they only saluted respectfully as the Qar passed. For a half a moment, Barrick even wondered if it might be possible for his two peoples to live in harmony again, as they had once centuries ago, but the looks of suspicion and even outright fear that he saw when he looked back at the guards’ faces showed what a foolish dream that was.

Barrick flexed his aching fingers and thought about Briony.

The pain had returned to his left hand, and even the muscles themselves seemed to have shrunk again to the way they used to be, tightening like a drying hide so that his hand pulled into a tight clench. It had begun when he touched his father’s coff in… no, it had happened a moment after that, as a memory of his father lifting him high in the air to show him the ocean from the top of the Tower of Summer. With the memory had come a wash of sadness, of missing the man he had spent so much time cursing. And with the memory had come the pain.