Tad Williams - Shadowmarch

“But the Twilight People are in the city just on the other side!”

He shook his head. “Then we will go another way. Across the bay and then southward down the coast. There are places in Helmingsea… I have prepared…”

“You… you thought something like this might happen?”

For the first time the old man laughed. It was a hard sound to hear, and quickly became a racking cough that was no more pleasant. “It is my task, Briony,” he said when he could speak again. “My sworn task. To think of anything that might happen— anything —and then prepare for it.”

Even with his body crippled and his life hanging by a thread, she thought she could hear a proud stubbornness in his words. It made her angry despite everything. “Shaso, why didn’t you tell me the truth about Kendrick?”

He shook his head. “Later. If we survive.” He got slowly and awkwardly to his feet and held out a hand. She shook it off and levered herself upright, conscious for the first time of how weary she was too, how badly all of her ached.

“Silent, now,” he said. “Stay in the shadows.”

The alleyway outside the storage room was empty, although they could hear sentries talking on top of the wall and a fire burned in the guardhouse beside the water gate. There had never been a night like this! Winter festival being celebrated in the castle while terrible enemies were encamped just across the water, her stepmother’s maid changing into a demon—it seemed that anything, absolutely any horrible, ghastly, impossible thing could happen tonight, and she wondered if she could entirely trust Shaso’s judgment. He was always so stiff-backed, so certain of his own Tightness, but who could judge properly on such a night? What if he was wrong? Should she give up her throne without a fight, run away just for fear of Hendon Tolly? If she called to the guards, wouldn’t they come to her in a heartbeat, their princess regent—wouldn’t they hunt down Tolly like the murdering dog that he was?

But what if, as Shaso feared, they did not? What if they were secretly Tolly’s men, already suborned with lies or gold?

Briony tried to imagine what her father would do, how he would think Stay alive, he would have told her, she knew that. If you are alive, you make all that Tolly say; a he. But if someone puts an arrow in you, then the people have no choice but to believe him, because Summerfield Court is the most powerful part of the kingdom outside Southmarch, and they have blood ties to the throne.

Shaso was leading her along the back rows near Skimmer’s Lagoon, she suddenly realized. She had hardly ever been to this part of the castle, its narrow streets full of ramshackle Skimmer houses, the quays jostling with the strangely shaped boats that seemed to house at least as many of the water folk as did the more conventional dwellings that loomed beside the docks. It seemed oddly quiet for Winter’s Eve, although she realized then that the hour must now be approaching midnight; the streets were almost deserted, some lights in high windows and a few snatches of faint music the only signs that people even lived here. She could hear the tied-up boats bumping against the piers and the occasional sleepily questioning call of a water bird.

“Where are we going?” she whispered as they waited in the shadows to cross one of the larger streets. The dwellings were crammed so close together and leaned so alarmingly overhead that it seemed more like a hornet’s nest than any human place. Shaso looked up and down, then waved for her to follow.

“Here,” he said. “This is the house of Turley, the headman.”

“Turley?” she whispered. It took her a moment to remember why the name was familiar. “I met him!”

Shaso did not reply, but knocked on the oval door; it was a strange pattern of sounds he made, too studied to be accidental. A few moments later the door opened just a slice and two wide eyes peered out. “I need to speak to your father,” Shaso said. “Now. Let us in.”

The girl stared as though she recognized him but hadn’t expected ever to see him at her door. “Cannot be done, Lord,” she said at last. “It is shoal-moot tonight.”

“I don’t care if it’s the end of the world, child,” the old man growled. “In fact, it is the end of the bloody world. Tell your father that Shaso dan-Heza is here on deadly urgent business.”

The door opened and the girl stepped out of the way. Briony realized she had seen this one before—the girl who, with her lover, saw the mysterious boat come into the lagoon the night before Kendricks’ death. Now she thought she knew what that boat had been carrying, and to whom.

Selia’s cursed witch-stone. If I had only paid more attention to what the Skimmers said…

The Skimmer girl recognized Briony and made a movement that was a sort of unschooled courtesy. “Highness,” she said, but although interested, she did not look overawed. Briony couldn’t remember the girl’s name, so she only nodded back.

The narrow passageway creaked like ships’ timbers as they walked down it. It smelled strongly, almost overpoweringly, of fish and salt and other less identifiable scents. The girl went ahead of them to open the door at the end of the hall. The room beyond was small and cold and the fire was tiny, as though meant more for light than heat. A few candles burned in the room as well, but it still wasn’t bright enough for Briony to be sure how many people sat crammed into the little space. She counted a dozen gleaming bald heads before giving up, but more shapes were crouched in the shadows against the walls. They all seemed to be men and they all turned to look at her with roundly shining, blinking eyes, like frogs on a lily pond.

“Headman Turley,” said Shaso. “I need your help. I need a boatman.The life of the princess is in danger.” A room’s worth of wide, wet stares grew even wider.

The one called Turley muttered to his fellows for a moment before standing. “Honored, Shaso-na,” he said at last in his slow, strangely-accented way, “we are honored, but we are all here sworn to a shoal-moot. We may none of us leave until the night ends or else it be blasphemy. Even were one of us to die, his body would here remain until the sun’s rise.”

“Is blasphemy worse than the death of the Princess of Southmarch, Olin’s daughter? Do you forget what you owe him?”

Turley winced a little, but his smooth face quickly became impassive again. “Still, even so, great Shaso-ma.”

Briony realized that the master of arms had encountered someone as stubborn as Shaso himself and wished the situation allowed her to enjoy the spectacle. “Can’t we wait until dawn?” she asked.

“We dare not try to leave by boat in daylight. And Hendon Tolly will not wait, but will find out soon where the passage we used gives out, and from there it will be short work to think of searching along Skimmer’s Lagoon. Brone, too, if he thinks he is acting to save you, will not hesitate to send men house-to-house.”

“But we want Brone to find us!”

“Perhaps. But again, if only one man be disloyal, an accident could happen—an arrow let fly at me that hits you by mistake, let us say…” The old Tuani warrior shook his head. Briony thought he looked as though he was having trouble standing so long. “Headman, can you not send us to someone else—someone you trust? We need a boatman.”

“I will be their boatman,” announced the Skimmer girl. Briony had not noticed her waiting and listening in the doorway behind them, the voice made her jump. The gathered men seemed to have missed her as well and they muttered in distress and surprise.

“You, Ena?” said her father.

“Me. I am as able with the boat as most men. This is Olin s daughter, after all—we dare not send her away. Who would give her shelter, who would take her where she needs to go? Calkin? Sawney Wander-Eye? There is a reason they are not here at the shoal-moot. No, I will take her.”