Kinswoman to Death
The gods have reigned in justice and strength ever after, defending the
heavens and the earth from all who would harm them. The fathers of
mankind have prospered under the gods'fair leadership. Those who follow
the teachings of the three brothers and their oracles and do them proper
fealty find a welcome place in Heaven after their own deaths.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
A GULLBOAT JUST IN FROM JAEL, which had received its news from other ships newly arrived from Devonis, had brought. word to Southmarch that the Autarch of Xis had sent a huge war fleet to Hierosol. The gullboat had left southern waters before collecting any further news, but no one in Southmarch Castle doubted that holy, an¬cient Hierosol was even now surrounded and besieged.
The doings of those aboveground only seldom stirred the inhabitants of Funderling Town, but they had already heard a great deal of bad news this year-the king imprisoned, the older prince murdered, the royal twins gone and perhaps dead. Many of the small folk wondered whether the final days had truly come, whether the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone had lost his patience with mortals entirely and would soon lay waste to all they had built. There was little work, anyway, nor much to eat or enjoy, so the most pious Funderlings spent their days praying and insisting that the rest of their people join them.
Today, two of the Metamorphic Brothers were standing just inside the gates of Funderling Town, scolding all who passed for trafficking with the sinful upgrounders. Chert turned his head away from them, ashamed but also angry. As if I had any choice.
"We see you, Brother Blue Quartz!" one of them called as lie hurried past. "And the Earth Elders see you too! You of all men must immediately foreswear and repent your wicked deed and evil companions."
He choked back a bitter reply, seized by a sudden, superstitious pang. Perhaps they were right. These were ominous times, no doubt, and it seemed he was squarely in the middle of every bad omen.
Protect me, O Lord of the Hot Wet Stone, he prayed. Protect your straying ser¬vant. I have done only what seemed best for my friends and family!
His god did not send any reply that would make him feel better, only the echo of the Metamorphic Brothers shouting after him, ordering him to repent and come back to the faithful.
The castle above was in chaos. Soldiers were everywhere, and the nar¬row streets were so crowded that he needed twice as long as he'd expected to make his way through the Outer Keep. Chert began sincerely to repent one thing, at least-agreeing to return to Brother Okros.
Those few big folk who even noticed him stared as though he were some unclean animal that had slipped into a house when the door had been left open. Several bumped hard against him,in the most crowded passages and almost knocked him over, and the men driving ox-wagons did not even bother to slow when they saw him, forcing him to dodge for his life in the muddy street among wheels taller than he was.
What madness is this? Why such hatred? Are we Funderlings to blame for the fairy folk across the bay? Or for the autarch trying to conquer Hierosol? But anger, he knew, would do him no good; better simply to keep his eyes open and avoid confrontation wherever possible.
To add to Chert's miseries, the soldiers at the Raven's Gate also seemed inclined to give him a difficult time. He had to wait, furious but silent, as they mocked his size and made doubting remarks about his errand to Brother Okros. He heard the bells of the great temple begin to toll the noon hour and his heart sank: he was now late to a summons from the Royal Physician. His fortunes improved a moment later with the arrival of a wagon driver looking to enter the Inner Keep with his huge, overloaded cart of wine barrels and no proper authorization. While the soldiers gleefully began to confiscate the shrieking driver's cargo, Chert slipped past them into the heart of the castle.
Why could Okros not have met me in the Observatory as he did last time? Chert thought bitterly to himself. That is only a few hundred steps from the gate to Fun-derling Town. I would have been there already and not had to stand and be mocked by the gate guards. But the summons had said Chert must come to the castel¬lan's chambers, where Chert supposed Okros must be involved in other business. Does that mean he has carried the mirror all the way across the castle?
Chaven Makaros had been delighted to see the summons from his treacherous onetime friend. "Praise all the gods," he had cried, "that means Okros still has not solved it yet!" The physician had actually trembled with relief as he read. "Of course you must go to him again, Chert. I will give you var¬ious paths to offer him that will lead him astray for weeks!"
Remembering, Chert made a noise of disgust. So he must tramp all the way across Southmarch and bear several kinds of indignity because two half-mad physicians were determined to play tug-of-war over a mirror! Of course, he reminded himself, it was not a good idea to turn down a sum¬mons bearing the royal crest of Southmarch, either.
Chert Blue Quartz had not entered the exalted premises of the royal res¬idence since he had worked on a large crew under the older Hornblende some ten years earlier, excavating a cellar to make a new buttery under the great kitchens. It had been a hard job, and now that he thought of it, a queer one: the king had set out very precise limitations on where they could dig, and as a result the new buttery had been a thing of strange an¬gles, crooked as a dog's hind leg. Still, he remembered the job fondly-it had been one of his first as a foreman in his own right-and still remem¬bered the pride he had felt to be working in the king's residence.
Today, though, he was cursedly late, and Chert's heart sank even further when he saw a group of soldiers lounging in front of the residence gate¬house. Chert knew as well as he knew how to spot a shear in a basalt fac¬ing that dealing with this number of guards would hold him up even longer. His experiences going in and out of Southmarch in the old days so he could explore the hills near the Shadowline had taught him that one guard had little to prove, and two would have generally made accommo¬dation between themselves not to work too hard, but soldiers in larger groups often decided to prove themselves to their fellows, or to show off- either way, disastrous for a man Chert's size who was also in a hurry.
He ducked behind a hedge as tall as he was and hurried out into the gar-den on the residence's western side, bypassing the front gate in search ol.in easier entrance. He found it along the wall behind a row of tangled, skele-tal bushes, a window leading into one of the ground floor rooms. It was too small for an ordinary man, and a tight fit even for Chert, which might have explained why it had been left unlatched. He wriggled through it and hung wincing from the frame until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could see how far it was to the floor. The room seemed to be an annex to the pantry, full of barrels and jars but blessedly empty of people. He dropped down, then hurried across it and out into the passage.
Now came the difficult part, trying to find his way across the residence to the castellan's chambers without anyone noticing him (or at least with¬out anyone realizing he had bypassed the gatehouse). He sighed as he reached the end of the first long hall. Half the hour must be gone now. Okros would be very angry.
After several false turnings, one of which led him into a parlor where a surprised group of young women sat sewing-he bowed repeatedly as he backed out-Chert found the inner gardens and made his way across the nearest one to the center of the residence, then back down the main cor¬ridor to the offices and official chambers near the front entrance. J would have been better off to let the guards abuse me, he thought in disgust. I have wasted twice as much time this way. Still, he had finally reached the section of the residence to which he had been summoned, so he no longer needed to hide himself whenever he heard footsteps. With the help of a slightly sus¬picious page he discovered the hallway to the castellan's chambers, and was about to rap on the beautifully carved and polished oak door when some¬thing stung his hand.
Chert cursed and swatted, but his attacker was no hornet or horsefly: in¬stead, something like a long, slender thorn hung from the flesh of his hand. He brushed at it in irritation but it did not come out, and when he at last plucked it painfully from his skin, he discovered to his astonishment that it was a tiny arrow only half the length of his finger, fletched with tiny strips of butterfly wing.
For a moment he could only stare at it, completely befuddled, but when he looked up and saw a little manlike shape clinging to a tapestry just across the hall, Chert finally realized what had happened. But why should the Rooftoppers want to hurt him? Wasn't he their ally-hadn't he and Bee-tledown been something like friends?
The minuscule assassin did not try to escape, hut waited as Chert strode toward him. For a moment he was tempted to reach up and, like some ter¬rible giant, simply pluck the little creature from the hanging and throw him down on the floor, perhaps even step on him. But even at the end of a bad morning, late to an appointment and with his hand throbbing, Chert was not the kind of man to hurt another without good cause, and he did not understand yet what had happened.
He leaned his face close. It was a young Rooftopper male, but not one he recognized. At least his attacker looked suitably frightened. "What are you after?" Chert growled.
The little man was hanging from a thread like a mountaineer on a rope. He waved one of his hands and piped, "Quiet, now! Be tha Chert, Beetle-down's companion?"
"Yes, I be bloody Chert. Why did you arrow me?"
"Beetledown-un sent me to say tha beest in danger! Go not inside!" The little man looked terrified now, and Chert considered how he must look to the fellow, a mountain with a frowning face. He leaned a little ways back.
"What do you mean?"
"No time-hide 'ee!" The Rooftopper, as though seeing something Chert could not see, scuttled up the thread to the top of the tapestry and disappeared behind it.
Before Chert could do more than blink, the door of the castellan's chamber across the hall rattled as the bolt was pulled back. Hide? Why? He had been summoned, hadn't he? He had every right to be here!
But why would Beetledown send someone to shoot an arrow at me just to get my attention if I wasn't truly in danger?
Suddenly his hackles were up and his skin was tingling. It must be some misunderstanding-but if it wasn't…?
There was no room to slip behind the tapestry, but a marble statue of Erivor stood in a little alcove shrine only a few steps down the passage on the same side as the door. Chert bolted for it. The statue rocked as he pushed his way behind it, and he barely had time to steady it before the door creaked open.
"He knows, curse him," said a voice that he recognized-Okros. "I should have simply had your men take him, Havemore."
"It would have been better not to alarm the little diggers, and if he had come of his own accord they would have been none the wiser," said the other man. "But now the soldiers will have to search for him."
"Yes, send them at once and search his house. The more I think, the more I believe he knows where Chaven is. That question I told yon of, what he asked about the mirror-that was too close to the mark." Okros' voice seemed hard and hot at the same time, like iron being shaped. Chert, with growing horror, could no longer pretend they were talking about someone else. They were sending soldiers to his house!
"Come with me, Brother," said the milder voice of the man called Have-more. "You will have to accompany the soldiers yourself because they may not recognize what is important."
"I will go, and gladly," Okros said. "And if we do find Chaven Makaros, I ask you only for a few hours alone with him before we inform our lord Hendon. It might… benefit us both."
The two men walked quickly down the corridor, followed by several soldiers. They had been waiting for him! If Beetledown hadn't sent the lit¬tle man with the arrow, Chert would have been arrested and dragged off to the Earth Elders only knew what end-imprisonment at the least, more likely torture.
And they're on their way to Funderling Town! To my house! Opal and the boy were in terrible danger-Chaven too if he was not hidden. Chert knew he had to get them all into hiding, but how? Cursed Okros and the man Have-more were already on their way down with armed soldiers!
He looked to make sure the hall was empty, then quickly extricated himself from the alcove shrine. He tugged gently on the tapestry and hissed for the little man.
"Help me, please! Can you get a message to Funderling Town quickly?"
After a moment the little man appeared again at the top of the tapestry and shimmied down on his thread. "No, can't, sir. Take too very long. P'raps if someone by bird went, but cote's all the way t'other side o' the Great Peak. Couldn't get to Fundertown fast enough ourselves, which be why Master Scout Beetledown sent me here to find 'ee." His tiny chest puffed up a little. "Travel faster, me, than nigh any other."
Chert sank to the floor in despair. It was hopeless. Even if he could somehow sneak out of the residence and through the Raven Gate, running as fast as he could, Okros and the soldiers would still get there before him. All this because of Chaven and his damned, blasted mirror! Ruined by his cursed secrets…!
Then he remembered the passage underneath Chaven's observatory. That would get him to the outskirts of Funderling Town in only moments,
perhaps while Okros and the soldiers were still trying to find then way through the confusing stone warren of dark streets to locate his house-he doubted any Funderling would give the big folk much help. Nothing made Chert's neighbors more resentful than people from aboveground throwing their weight around, especially in the little folk's own domain.
It's barely a chance, but it's better than naught, he told himself. He jumped to his feet and put his head close to the Rooftopper.
"Thank you, and tell Beetledown I thank him, too," Chert whispered. "I will ask the Earth Elders to lead him to great blessings-but now I must go save my family."
Chert ran off down the passage, leaving his tiny savior spinning on his thread like a startled spider.
The last two days had brought Matt Tinwright attention that at any other time would have delighted him, but just now was wretchedly incon¬venient. Because he had been invited to read a poem by Hendon Tolly himself, and in front of Hendon's brother Duke Caradon, many of those at court had decided Tinwright was becoming a pet of the Tollys and there¬fore someone whose acquaintance was worth cultivating. People who had never bothered to speak to him before now seemed to sidle up to him wherever he went, desiring a love poem written for them or a good word spoken about them to the new masters of Southmarch.
Today he had finally found a chance to slip off on his own. Most of the castle's inhabitants and refugees were in Market Square at the festival cele¬brating the third day of Kerneia, so the corridors, courtyards, and wintry gardens of the inner keep were largely empty as Tinwright made his way out of the residence and into the warren of cramped streets that lay in the shadow of the old walls behind the residence.
"When he reached the two-story cottage at the end of a row of flimsy, weatherbeaten houses not far from the massive base of the Summer Tower, he went up the stairs quietly-not because he thought anyone would hear him (the street's inhabitants were no doubt all drinking free ale in Market Square) but more because the magnitude of his crime seemed to demand a certain re¬spect best shown by silence and slow movements. Brigid opened the door. The barmaid was dressed for the tavern, her bodice pushing up her breasts like biscuits overflowing a pan, but that was the only thing welcoming about her.
"Tinwright, you miserable lizard, you were supposed to he here an hour gone! I'll lose my position-or worse, I'll have to turn my tail to Conary again to keep it. I should go right to your Hendon Tolly and tell him all about you."
His guts turned to water. "Don't even joke, Brigid."
"Who's joking?" She scowled, then turned to look back at the pale fig¬ure lying on the bed. "I'll say this for you, she's pretty enough… for a dead girl, that is."
Tinwright swayed a little and had to grab the doorframe. "I told you, don't joke! Please, let me in-I don't want anyone to see me." He edged past her and stopped. "Brigid, love, really truly, I'm grateful. I treated you badly and you've been more kind than I had any right to hope."
"If you think that you can honey-talk me instead of paying me…"
"No, no! Here it is." He pulled out the coin and put it in her hand. "I'll never be able to thank you properly…"
"No, you won't. Ah, well, the wee thing is all yours now, right and proper." Brigid smirked. "I always knew you were a bit of an idiot, Matty, but this goes beyond anything I'd guessed."
"Has she showed any signs of waking?"
"Some. A bit of moaning and tossing, like having a bad dream." She threw her shawl over her shoulders. "Must go now. Conary will be furious, but maybe I can sweeten him up by working late. I'm never swiving with that old mackerel again if I can help it."
"You are a true friend," he said.
"And you're an idiot, but I think I said that already." She stepped out into the misty afternoon and pulled the door closed behind her.
The noise of Elan's quiet breath did not change much, but somehow he knew that she was awake. He put down the book of sonnets and hurried to the side of the bed. Her eyes were moving, her face slackly puzzled.
"Where… where am I?" It was scarcely more than a whisper. "Is this some… some waiting-place?" She saw him moving and her eyes turned toward him, but for long moments they could not fix on him. "Who are you?"
He could only pray that the tanglewife's potion had not injured her mind. "Matt Tinwright, my lady."
For a moment she did not understand, perhaps did not even recognize
the name, then her face twisted into anguish. "Oh, Mutt. Did you take the poison, too? You sweet boy. You were meant to live."
He took a breath, then another. "I… I did not take poison. You did not either, or at least not enough to die. You are alive."
She shook her head and her eyes sagged closed again.
He had told her. She hadn't heard him. Did that mean he was allowed to run away into the night and never look back? Not that he dared desert her, but the gods knew that almost anything would be preferable to stand¬ing before this woman and telling her he'd betrayed her trust…
"What?" Her eyes opened again, far more alert this time, but wide and frightened like those of a trapped animal. "What did you say?"
The moment to escape, if there had ever truly been such a moment, was gone. Tinwright wondered if a real man should offer to take real poison to make up for his crime. Perhaps, he reminded himself, but he wasn't a real man-not that kind, anyway. "I said you're not dead, my lady. Elan. You're alive."
She tried to lift her head, but could not. Her gaze jumped fearfully from side to side. "What…? Where am I? Oh, no, surely you are lying. You are some demon of the lands before the gate, and this is a test."
He was surprised to discover that he felt even lower than he had thought he would. "No, Lady Elan, no. You are alive. I could not bear to see you die." He dropped to his knees and took her hand, still cold as death. "You are in a safe place. I had confederates." He shook his head. "I make it too grand. A woman I know, one who has been kind enough to tend you, and to help especially with… with your privacies…" He felt himself blushing and was disgusted. Matt Tinwright, man of the world! But something about this woman reduced him to childish embarrassments. "She and I stole you out of the residence." He could not quite bear to tell her yet that they had dragged her to this place in a laundry basket.
Her eyes were now shut again. "Hendon…"
"He thinks you have run away. He seemed amused, to be honest. He is a bad man, Lady Elan…"
"Oh, the gods have mercy, he will find me. Matt Tinwright, you are a fool!"
"So everyone tells me."
She tried to rise again, but was far too weak. "I trusted you and you be¬trayed me."
"No! I… I love you. I couldn't bear to… to…"
"Then you are twice a fool. You loved a dead woman. If I could not let myself love you then, how could I now, when you've denied me the one release I could hope for?" Tears ran down her cheeks but she did not, or perhaps could not, lift her hands to dry them. Tinwright moved forward with his own kerchief, but as he began dabbing at her face she turned away. "Leave me alone."
"But, my lady…!"
"I hate you, Tinwright. You are a boy, a foolish boy, and in your child¬ishness you have doomed me to horror and misery. Now get out of my sight. Is there no chance the poison might yet kill me?"
He hung his head. "You have been asleep almost three days. You will re¬gain your strength soon."
"Good." She opened her eyes as if to fix his face one last time in her memory, then squeezed them shut again. "At least then I'll be able to take my own life and do it properly. All gods curse me for a coward, seeking to do the deed with womanish, weak poisons!"
"But…"
"Go! If you do not leave me alone, you craven, I shall scream until some¬one comes. I think I have the strength for that."
He stood on the stairs for a long time, uncertain of where to go, let alone what to do. The rains had begun again, turning the muddy alley into a swamp and the Summer Tower into an unlit beacon on a storm-battered coast.
Can't go back, can't go forward. He hung his head, felt the cold rain drib¬ble down the back of his neck. Zosim, you nasty godling, you have put me in another trap and I'm sure you're laughing. Why did I ever think you and your heav¬enly kind might have changed their minds about me?
"Opal!" Chert shouted, then a fit of coughing snatched what little re¬mained of his breath. He bent over in the doorway, gasping as if he had cut into a bed of dry gypsum. "Opal, get the boy," he called when he had re¬covered a little. "We have to hide." But it was strange she had not come to him already.
He staggered into the back room. It was empty, with no sign of his wife or Flint. His heart, already put to a cruel test with his dash across the Inner Keep and just beginning to slow, instead started to race once more. Where
could she be? There were at least a dozen possible places, but Brother Okros and those soldiers could only be a short way behind him and he did not have time to rush around searching blindly.
He went out into Wedge Road and began beating on doors, but suc¬ceeded only in frightening their neighbor Agate Celadon half to death. She didn't know where Opal had gone, nor did anyone else. Chert sent a des¬perate prayer to the Earth Elders as he sprinted toward the guildhall as fast as his weary legs could take him.
There seemed to be more people around the venerable building than usual, he saw as he hobbled up the front steps, important and unimportant folk milling about on the landing before the front door. The inner cham¬ber was equally crowded. Several of the men called to him, but when he only demanded to know whether they'd seen Opal or the boy, they shrugged and shook their heads, surprised that he did not want to hear what they had to say.
Chert almost ran into Chaven in the anteroom of the Council Cham¬ber. The physician caught him, then waited patiently while the exhausted Funderling slowly filled his lungs back up with air.
"I am longing to hear your news," Chaven said, "but I have been called with some urgency by some of your friends on the Guild Council. It seems a stranger-one of the big folk as you call us, one of my kind-has stum¬bled into the Council room. Everyone is quite upset about it."
"By the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone, don't go in there!" Chert reached up and grabbed Chaven's sleeve as tightly as he could. "That's what I've come… come to tell you about. It must be one of Brother Okros' soldiers- maybe even Okros himself!"
"Okros? What are you talking about?" Now Chert had the physician's full attention.
"I'll tell you, but… but if they are already in the guildhall, I fear my news is too late." Chert slumped to the floor, panting. "I'll just c-catch my breath, then I ha-have to find Opal."
"Tell me first," Chaven said. "The keepers of this hall told me it is only one man. Perhaps we can take him prisoner before his fellows realize "where he has gone." He stood and waved some of the other Funderlings over, then squatted by Chert once more. "Tell me all."
"It does not matter," Chert moaned. "I have lost my family and I can't find them. Soon the soldiers will be everywhere. There's nothing we can do, Chaven."
"Perhaps." For the first time in a while, the physician seemed his old. con fident self. "But that does not mean 1 will give in to that traitorous thief Okros without a fight." Chaven turned to the other Funderlings who were beginning to gather around them. "Some of you men must have weapons, or at least picks and stone-axes. Go get them. We'll capture the one lurking in the Council Chamber first, then make him tell us where his fellows are."
So now the Funderlings were to follow a paunchy scholar into battle against Hendon Tolly and all the giant soldiers of Southmarch? If Chert had not been so close to weeping, he might even have enjoyed the bleak joke of it, but all he could think was that his people's world was ending and it was mostly his fault.
"By all the oracles, it is bitter out here!" Merolanna said for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. "I should have brought more furs. Is there nothing in this boat to keep an old woman from freezing to death?"
The young Skimmer Rafe didn't even look up from his oars. "It's not a pleasure barge, is it? Fishing boat, that's what it is. Might be a sealskin in that bag, still."
The duchess waited for Sister Utta to volunteer her services; then, when Utta did no such thing, she began with evident reluctance to poke among the articles wedged under the bench, sighing loudly. Utta, who was deter¬mined not be moved, looked away.
She returned to her inspection of Rafe, their boatman and (at least as long as they were on the water) their guide in unfamiliar territory. It was not just the long Skimmer arms that marked him out, although those were very much in evidence as he plied the oars against the choppy swells of Brenn's Bay. Some of the other differences were hidden now that he had put on a thin shirt, seemingly more as a sop to convention than as actual protection against the chill bay winds: like his arms, his neck seemed longer than with most folk, and it made a bit of a hump where it joined his back between the shoulder blades.
His head seemed canted forward, too, as if the point of connection was higher on the back of the skull, but most interesting and disturbing of all was the confirmation of what Utta had thought only a rumor, but now knew as truth: Rafe's fingers and toes were webbed, although most of the time it did not show.
Could all the childhood stories be true, then? Were the Skimmers a dif¬ferent race entirely, like the Rooftoppers surely must be?
"What do your people say?" Utta asked him suddenly, then realized she was speaking thoughts aloud that he couldn't possibly understand. "About where they came from, I mean?"
He looked up at her, wrinkling the skin of his brow in distrust. "Why do you ask?"
"I am curious, I suppose. I grew up in the Vuttish Isles, and none of your folk still live there, although there are stories that they did…"
"Stories?" he said bitterly. "I'll trow there were."
"What do you mean?"
"That were all ours once, your Vuttland."
"It was?"
He snorted. "Wasn't it? Didn't our kings rule there, with the Great Moot? Didn't the Golden Shoal come to rest there, at the rock of Egye-Var?"
She had no idea what he was talking about. "Then why did they leave?"
"Should ask T'chayan Redhand, shouldn't you?"
"Who is that?"
His eyes widened. He was not pretending-he was truly astonished. "Don't know T'chayan the Killer? The man who murdered most all my kind in the islands, women and spawn, too, drove our people out of our home and hunted us wherever we went with his dogs and his arrows?"
She blinked, surprised. "Do you mean King Tane the White?" Utta was better read than most of her fellow Vuttlanders, especially because she had gone away, first to the women's remove at Connord, then to the Eastmarch convent to complete her Zorian novitiate. In fact, she knew more of his¬tory than most men, but what the Skimmer youth said was new to her. "Tane is not so well known to us now. I may have heard his name once or twice when I was a girl. When Connord conquered the isles and converted the Vuttish Isles to the Trigonate faith, much of our old history was lost."
"Your people do not remember T'chayan Redhand?" The Skimmer youth shook his head in stunned horror. "Sure, you're lying to tease me, then. Your people don't repent his bloody deeds, or at least celebrate them?"
"What are the two of you going on about?" demanded Merolanna, pok¬ing her head out from the hood she had made of the sealskin.
Sister Utta shook her head. "I'm sorry," she told Rafe. "Truly, I am. My people have forgotten, I suppose, but that doesn't mean we should have."
He shut his mouth with an almost audible snap and refused to talk any more, or even look at Utta, as though she herself had just returned from the long task of eradicating all memory of the wrongs done to his forebears.
The day was cold and cloudy, with intermittent rain. The fog that lin¬gered in the mainland city seemed weirdly heavy to Utta, like clouds that lay on the ocean instead of hanging in the sky. She could make out a few landmarks jutting through the murk, the market flagpoles and all the tem¬ple spires, but the mists made them seem something else, perhaps the skele¬tal ribs of ancient monsters.
Rafe moved the boat ably through the high waves as they got closer to land; Merolanna alternately clutched the side of the boat and Utta. At times they actually lifted off the benches, then slammed down hard in the next trough. For the first time, Utta wished she had changed back into women's clothes, since they would have offered more protection for her rapidly bruising fundament.
At last they were through and into the shallows. Rafe grounded the boat on a sandbar. "If you walk up that way, won't get your feet too wet," he said.
"Aren't you coming with us?"
"For one silver urchin? You'll want a bodyguard or a troop of soldiers, and you won't get them for one merely urchin, will you? I said I'd bring you here and take you back. Means I'll sit and wait, not go in 'mongst the Old Ones. Their kind don't like my kind."
Utta helped Merolanna out, but despite the duchess' best efforts, the hems of her long skirts still dragged in the water. "Why don't they like you?"
"Us?" Rafe laughed. His face changed when he did it, looked both more and less like an ordinary man's. "Because we stayed behind, didn't we?"
Utta did not get to ask any more questions because just at that moment Merolanna slipped and fell. As the older woman floundered in the shallow water, Utta struggled to lift her until Rafe jumped lightly out of the boat to help. Together the two of them managed to get the dowager duchess up¬right again.
"Merciful Zoria, look at me!" Merolanna groaned. "I am soaking wet! I'll catch my death of something, that's sure."
"Here, wait," said the young Skimmer, then splashed back to the boat. He returned with the sealskin. "Wrap this around you."
"Thank you," said Merolanna with a certain amount of ceremonycertainly more than this isolated cove had seen in some time, Utta could not help thinking. "You are very kind."
"Still not going with you, though." Rafe waded back to the boat.
"Your Grace, I suspected this was not a good idea before. Now I am cer¬tain of it." Sister Utta was trying her best not to peer at the empty houses on either side of the Port Road because they didn't really seem empty: the black holes of their windows seemed something more sinister, the eye sock¬ets of skulls or the mouths of dragon caves. Even here on the outskirts of town, where the houses were low and the winds brisk, the fog still hung in cobwebby tendrils and it was hard to see more than a few dozen paces ahead. "I think we should go back to the castle."
"Do not try to change my mind, Sister. I have come all the way here and I will speak to the fairy folk. They can kill me if they want, but I will at least ask them what became of my son."
But if they kill you, why would they let me go? Utta did not speak this thought aloud, not out of any desire to spare Merolanna's feelings, but be¬cause in her growing hopelessness, suspended in this foggy dreamworld as if they were ghosts roaming aimlessly in the realms of Kernios, she did not think it would make any difference. Utta knew she had cast her sticks, as the old gambler's saying went, and now she must shake out her coppers.
They walked slowly up a steep road, Merolanna dripping with every step, into the open, rain-sprinkled cobbles of Blossom Market Square-not a place to buy flowers, but the venerable home of the mainland fish mar¬ket, whose famous stink had been jestingly memorialized in its name. Other than the still-pungent memories of market days past, the square seemed empty now, the awnings and tents gone, the people all fled to the castle or to cities further south, but Utta could not rid herself of the sense of being watched. If anything, it grew stronger as she walked with the duchess across the open space, so that each step seemed slower and more difficult, as though the mist was getting into her very bones, making them sodden and heavy. It was almost a relief when a figure stepped out of a shadowed arch at the edge of the market and stood waiting for them.
Utta had prepared herself for virtually anything, her imagination fueled by the books in the castle library and the tales of her Vuttish grandmother. She was ready for giants, or monsters, or even beautiful, godlike creatures. She was not as well prepared for an ordinary mortal man in a simple, homespun robe.
"Good afternoon to you," he said. Utta thought he must be one of the few who had stayed behind, although it seemed impossible he should have come unhurt and unchanged through the Twilight folk's conquest of the city. She could see now that there was something strange about him, some thing not quite right, and as he approached she found herself shying back.
"No need to fear me." He turned and bowed to Merolanna."You are the duchess, are you not? I have seen you once or twice in the castle after I was released."
"Released?" said Merolanna. Utta stared-there was something familiar about him, although by most standards he had one of the least noteworthy faces she had ever seen. "Who are you, sir?"
"I was known for many years by the name of Gil, and had no other. Now I am called Kayyin… again. My story might interest you-in fact, it might interest me, too, if I could remember it all-but for now I am only to be your escort. Please, let me take you to her."
"To whom?" Merolanna asked. Utta was suddenly too fearful to speak. The sun was sinking behind the great seawall and the city was all shadows. "What are you talking about, man?"
"To the mistress of this city. You are commanded to come to her."
"Commanded?" Merolanna bristled a little.
"Oh, yes, Your Grace. She can command anyone-she is greater than any mere queen." He stepped nimbly between them and took each woman by an elbow. "Even the gods must fear her. You see, she is kinswoman to death itself."
"You certainly are an impertinent man," Merolanna said. "Why do you speak so strangely? How did you come to be here?"
"I speak strangely because I am no man," he told her. "Nor am I one of the Qar-not anymore, not after I lived so long as one of your kind, for¬getting I was anything else. I am unique, I think-no longer one or the other."
Utta was uncomfortably aware of shapes appearing from the shadows and falling silently into place behind them like an army of cats. She looked back. There were at least three dozen of the tall, slender warriors, eyes gleaming in the depths of their hoods and helmets. Chilled, heart speeding, she said nothing. If Merolanna did not know, let her enjoy her last moments of security.
The duchess certainly seemed to be doing her best to remain ignorant. "Are you not shamed to speak so?" she asked their odd guide. "I must say
I do not think very highly ol someone who is such thin milk as to say, 'I am not one or the other'-especially when our two peoples are at war!"
"If you cut out the gills of a fish, Duchess, would you then blame him when he said he did not belong in the water? And yet, he still would not be a man, either." As they reached the far end of the foggy square their guide stopped and raised his hand. "We are here."
Before them lay the bulky stone towers of the Council House where the city's leaders had met, a second seat of power in Southmarch that had on occasion, during times of weak rulers and strong councils, set itself on a nearly equal footing with the throne itself. Its square central tower still loomed above the surrounding buildings, a blocky shape like the chimney of some immense, underground mansion, but the rest of the ancient Coun¬cil House looked different. It took Utta a moment to realize that what had softened its contours and shadowed its facade was a lattice of woody, dark vines that shrouded most of the building. The vines had not been there the last time she had been in Blossom Market Square, she was certain, but they looked like the product of centuries.
The three dozen or so Qar walking silently behind them had now grown to hundreds, a true army, which filled the square on either side of them, a forest of dimly glittering eyes and pale, hostile faces. Some did not even come close to resembling mortal men. Utta made the sign of the Three and fought against an urge to pull away from their guide and run. She turned to whisper something to the duchess, but she could see by Merolanna's face that the older woman already knew what was happening and had only been pretending she didn't. It was not obliviousness, but a sort of bravery.
More Qar stepped out in front of them, leaving only a narrow aisle be¬tween their ranks, leading to the steps of the Council House.
Zoria, forgive me for my selfish thoughts and my pride. Utta put her head down, then lifted it as proudly as she could, like a prisoner going to the gal¬lows. They climbed the wide stairs behind the man who did not know what he was.
It took a moment for her eyes to make sense of the gloom inside the main hall, and when she did she was surprised to see how many of the Twi¬light folk were here, too: they truly were quiet as cats, these Qar, as they seemed to call themselves. In fact, it was almost exactly like disturbing some congregation of alley-lurkers: the faces swung up, oddly shining eyes fixed on the newcomers, but the faces showed nothing. Some of them were so
disturbing to look at that she could not boat to see them for more than an instant. When one of them curled a lip and snarled at her, showing teeth sharp as needles, Utta had to stop, unable to walk for fear she would slum-ble and fall.
"Just a little farther," said Kayyin kindly, taking her arm again."She waits right there-can you see her? She is beautiful, isn't she?"
Utta let herself be led forward to the empty center of the room, which contained only one unprepossessing chair and two figures, one sitting, one standing. The one standing behind the chair was female, dressed in plain robes, but her eyes gleamed like fogged mirrors.
The woman in the chair was less obviously unusual, except for her size. She appeared to be as tall as a good-sized man, although achingly thin, but the spikiness of her dark, unreflecting armor made it hard to gauge any¬thing to a certainty. She had the single most unfeeling face Utta had ever seen, one that made the famously stern statue of Kernios in Market Square seem like a child's favorite uncle. Her high, slitted eyes and her wide, pale-lipped mouth might have been carved from stone. Utta felt her legs begin to tremble again. What had the odd man called her-Death's kinswoman? Merciful Zoria and all the gods of heaven, she looks like Death iself!
Merolanna too seemed to have lost her courage: they both had to be urged forward by Kayyin, each step heavier than the last, until at last they both slumped to their knees a few paces from the foot of the throne.
"This is Duchess Merolanna Eddon, a member of the royal family of Southmarch," Kayyin said as if he were the herald at a court ball. If he truly had lived in the castle once, Utta decided, it was not surprising that he knew Merolanna s name. But then he added, "And this is Utta Fornsdodir, a Zorian sister. They wish an audience with you, Lady Yasammez."
The woman in black armor looked slowly from Merolanna to Utta, her stare like the touch of an icy finger. A moment later she turned away as if the women were no more substantial than air. "Your japes bring me no pleasure, Kayyin." Her voice was as chill as her gaze; she spoke with a strange, archaic lilt. "Take them away." She spread her long white fingers, said something in a low mutter, then spoke aloud again in a language Utta and Merolanna could understand. "Kill them."
"Hold a moment!" Merolanna's voice trembled, but the duchess clambered up onto her feet even as Utta began to pray, certain that her last moments were upon her. "I have come to you not as an enemy, but as a mother-a mother wronged. I come to you seeking a boon and you would kill me?"
Yasammez stared at her, a black, unreadable stare. "But I am no mother," the fairy woman said. "Not anymore. What seek you?"
"My child. My son. I am told he was taken by the Twilight… by the Qar. Your people. I wish to know what happened to him." She gained strength as she spoke. Utta could not help admiring her: whatever her other foibles, Merolanna was no coward.
"Do you hear?" said Kayyin suddenly. "She is appealing to you as one woman to another. As one parent to another." There was something oddly barbed in his tone. "Surely you will not harden your heart to her-will you, Mother?"
Yasammez shot him a look of venom unlike anything Utta had ever seen. If it had been directed at her, she felt sure she would have shriveled and burned like a dry leaf fallen into a fire. A stream of the sharp-edged yet strangely fluid speech rushed out of the woman in the black armor. Kayyin smiled, but it was the miserable smile of someone who had, with great ef¬fort, cut off his own nose to spite his face.
Death's kinswoman swiveled around to stare at Utta and Merolanna- this time, Utta could not meet her fierce gaze. "You come to me on a day when I have learned of the death of my treasured Gyir, when I have felt him die-the one who should have been my son instead of this changeling trai¬tor. And with Gyir the Storm Lantern dead, the Pact of the Glass must be ended, because the Glass itself will never reach the House of the People." The armored woman slammed her hand down on the arm of the rough chair and the wood snapped into flinders, but she did not seem to notice. "I will now wage war again on your people until the place you call South-march is mine, and if I must kill every sunlander man, woman, and child within its walls, I will do so without a qualm." She stared again. Her anger faded and her expression hardened as though ice covered it. "It could be, though, that you will be more use to me as messengers, so I will not kill you yet. But speak no more to me of your child, sunlander bitch. I could not care if my people stole an entire litter of human whelps from you." She waved. Several guards stepped forward and took possession of Utta and Merolanna, although the duchess seemed to have fainted. Utta could make no sense out of what was happening, only that they had stumbled into something more dreadful than her worst fears.
"It will be a joy to hear again the screams of your kind," the monstrous woman said to Utta, then waved the prisoners away.