Briony rolled her eyes, then grabbed the woman’s arm roughly, silencing her. “Stop—I’m trying to help you.” Estir stared at her, frightened. She had her mask on now, Briony realized, the Eddon mask that none of the players had seen. She made her voice hard. “If you keep your mouth shut, you and the others may walk away from this happy and healthy. If you cause a fuss, I can’t promise anything.”
Estir Makewell’s eyes grew wide at the change in Briony’s tone. She retreated to the other side of the room and stayed there until the guards came and led her out.
Finn Teodoros had some bruises around his eyes and a bleeding weal on his bald head. He gave Briony a shamefaced look as the guards led him in and sat him down on the bench beside her.
“Well, Tim, my young darling,” he said, “it seems as if your disguise has been penetrated by these crude folk from outside the theatrical fraternity.” He touched his swollen cheek and winced. “I swear I didn’t tell them.”
“They found out when they searched me. It doesn’t matter anyway.” Briony took a breath. The very fact that the guards had left the two of them alone in the room meant they were almost certainly listening to everything that was being said. “I need your help,” she told Teodoros. “I need you to tell me the truth.”
He gave her a look that contained a mixture of caution and amusement. “And who in this wretched old world can actually say what that is, dear girl?”
She nodded, conceding the point. “As much truth as you know,” she said, then looked significantly around the room. “As much as you can tell.”
He sighed. “I am truly sorry you were caught up in this. I have tried to tell them that you had nothing to do with it.”
“Don’t worry about me. I am less innocent than you think, Finn. Just tell me one thing—were you working for Hendon Tolly?”
He stared at her, clearly calculating. “Tolly?”
“I may be able to protect you, but you must tell me the truth about that. I must know.”
“You, protect me? Girl, you are not Zoria in truth, you merely aped her on the boards!” He smiled, but it was little more than a fearful twitch. He swallowed, leaned close to her. “I... I do not know,” he said in a voice that was scarcely even a whisper. “I was given a...a task...by someone else. Someone high in the government of Southmarch.” She hazarded a guess. “Was it Lord Brone? Avin Brone?” His eyebrows rose. “How would you know of such things?”
“If I can save us, I will, and then you will learn more. Were you to meet with Dawet dan-Faar on Brone’s behalf? Drakava’s man?”
This time Finn Teodoros could say nothing, but in his surprise could only nod.
Briony stood up, walked to the door. “I wish to talk to the guard captain, please,” she called, “or anyone in authority. I have something to say that the king himself will want to know.”
This time there was a much longer wait before the door opened. Several guards came through, followed a moment later by a well-dressed man in the high collar of a court grandee. He had gray in his pointed beard, but did not otherwise seem very old, and he moved with the grace of a young man. He reminded her a little bit of Hendon Tolly, an unpleasant association. “Do not rise,” the noble said with perfectly pitched courtesy. “I am the Marquis of Athnia, the king’s secretary. I understand you believe you have something to say that is worth my listening. I’m sure it goes without saying that there is a very unpleasant penalty for wasting my time.”
Briony sat up straighter. She had heard of Athnia—he was a member of the old and wealthy Jino family and one of the most important men in Syan. Apparently the guards had taken what she said seriously. On the bench Finn Teodoros swayed, almost fainting with apprehension at the appearance of such a powerful figure.
“I do.” She stood up. “I can do no good to anyone by proceeding with this counterfeit. I am not an actor. I am not a spy. I do not believe this man here or any of the other actors are spies, either—at least they meant no harm to Syan or King Enander.”
“And why should we believe anything you say?” the marquis asked her. “Why should we not take you down to the brandy cellars and let the men there extract the truth from all of you?”
She took a breath. Now that the moment had come, it was surprisingly difficult to put off the cloak of anonymity. “Because you would be torturing the daughter of one of your best and oldest allies, Lord Jino,” she said, straightening her spine, trying to will herself taller and more imposing. “My name is Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M’Connord Eddon, daughter of King Olin of Southmarch, and I am the rightful princess regent of all the March Kingdoms.”
It’s my dream, he thought. I’m trapped in my own nightmare!
Shouts and screams surrounded him like strange music. The corridors were full of fire and smoke and some of the running, horribly charred shapes were as black and faceless as the men in his dream.
Is that what it meant, then? He staggered to a stop in a wide place at the junction of several tunnels and crouched beside an overturned ore cart. Every bone and sinew in his body had been battered until he could hardly walk, and his crippled arm felt like the bones were grinding together each time it moved. Was my dream telling me that this is where I die?
A small, clumsy shape staggered past him, keening in a shrill, mad voice. Barrick tried to rise, but couldn’t. His heart was shuddering and tripping like a bird’s, and his legs felt as though they would not support a sparrow, let alone his own weight. He let his head sag and tried to breathe.
I don’t want to die here. I won’t die here! But what was the sense of such foolish statements? Gyir hadn’t wanted to die here either but that hadn’t saved him—Barrick had felt the fairy’s dying moment. Ferras Vansen hadn’t wanted to die here either, yet he had still fallen down to certain destruction in the stony black depths. What made Barrick think he would be any different? He was lost in the deeps of an old, bad place, trapped in the dark, surrounded by enemies... But I have to try. Must. I promised...!
He wasn’t even sure any more what he had promised or to whom: three faces hovered before his eyes, shifting and merging, dissolving and reforming—his sister with her fair hair and loving looks, the fairy-woman with her stony, ageless face, and the dark-haired girl from his dreams. The last was an utter stranger, perhaps not even real, and yet in some ways, at this moment, she seemed more real and familiar than the others.
Push against it, she had told him on that bridge between two nowheres. Escape it. Change it.
He had not understood—had not wanted to understand— but she had insisted he not give up, not surrender to pain.
This is what you have, she had told him, eyes wide and serious. All of it. You have to fight.
Fight. If he was going to fight, he supposed he’d have to get up. Didn’t any of them understand he had a right to be bitter—to be more than bitter? He hadn’t asked for any of this—not the terrible injury to his arm or the curse of his father’s blood, not the war with the fairies or the attentions of an insane demigod. Didn’t all the women who were demanding he do this or that—go on a mission, come home safe, fight against despair—didn’t they know he had a right to all that misery?
But they just wouldn’t leave him alone.