“I do not… I do not understand you.” Olin sounded weak and ill now.
“Oh, I think you do. Or at least you grasp the general drift of what I say—because you have thought such things yourself. Admit it, Olin, you are surprised to hear such ideas—ideas more exalted but otherwise not so different from your own—coming from one you think of as so different from yourself. Well, you are right—I am different. Because where you have learned these secrets and thought these thoughts in the depths of despair, trying to learn why you and your line are so cursed, I have stepped forward and said, ‘These secrets are what I seek, but I will not be the anvil, I will be the hammer. It is I who will do the shaping.’ ” The autarch let out another gleeful laugh. “You see, I know what is beneath your castle, Olin of Southmarch. I know the curse that has bedeviled your family for generations, and I know what caused it. But unlike you, I will shape that power to my own will. Unlike you, I will not let heaven rule me with ancient tales and infantile warnings! The power of the gods will be mine—and then I will punish heaven itself for trying to deny me!”
After the autarch returned to his cabin, King Olin remained at the rail, staring silently at the water. Pinimmon Vash, whose knees were throbbing now too, dared not move yet for fear the northern king would notice him. At last, Olin turned and let his guards lead him back toward his small cabin. For a moment Vash could see the foreign king’s face clearly, its skin so slack and its hue so ghastly pale that Olin might have already been dead. In fact, the foreigner looked as though he had seen not only his own death, but the end of everything he loved.
Pinimmon Vash, who had never wasted a drop of pity on others, thought of Olin’s bloodless face and found himself hoping that the gods would show mercy on the northern king and let him die in his sleep that night.
5. A Droplet of Peace
“During the years of the Great Death, most fairies were driven out of the lands of men, accused of spawning and spreading that terrible plague. But Phayallos and others claim that fairy-villages such as a cave city near Falopetris in Ulos were found empty but for the bodies of dead Qar, who had succumbed to the pox before any man had reached them.”
“ No.” The barmaid slammed the coin down on the wet, greasy board and walked away.
Matt Tinwright wanted her to take it, but he had to admit to a certain ambivalence. It was the last of his money, a single silver sturgeon borrowed—along with the three he’d already spent in the last fortnight—after a heroic wheedling of old Puzzle, a feat of flattery, exaggeration, and outright sniveling that would be celebrated among the guild of beggars for centuries to come. Not that Tinwright had exaggerated everything he had said to get Puzzle to take his coins out of the odiferous little bag he kept in his boot: he really did need the money, and it really was a matter of life or death.
“Please, Brigid,” he said quietly as the barmaid passed him again. There weren’t many people in the Quiller’s Mint at this time of the day, and those who were would doubtless not know the difference between voices inside their head or outside, but it was not the sort of thing one talked about loudly. “Please. There is no one else who can help me.”
“And I don’t care.” She stopped in front of him, fists on hips, and bent forward so that her face was only a hand’s-breadth from his own. Normally he would have been distracted by the amount of bosom this pose displayed, but even his most dominating instincts were at the moment shriveled by fear of his awesome responsibility. “My brothers helped you get her out of her rooms and I helped you get her over to the new place—I even carried the snobby cow while you ran off and piddled your pantaloons.”
“A base lie!” he said, then lowered his voice. “I had to go and distract those men. They were priests—clerics from the castle’s counting house. They are sober men and would have known right away something was not right.” He remembered the terror of that moment, hearing them coming down the passage as he and the serving wench were dragging a dazed, barefoot Elan M’Cory to the room he had rented and prepared for her near Skimmers Lagoon. It had been even more frightening than the time he had thought he was about to be executed by Avin Brone: that time he had not known why he was in trouble, but this time Tinwright had helped a young noblewoman poison herself—although without letting her actually achieve that goal. Now he had to keep the recovering Elan hidden from Hendon Tolly and the others. Almost being caught like that—well, he wouldn’t admit it to Brigid, but the state of his clothing had been a near thing.
“You know, it’s a funny thing, Matty, but I still don’t care.” Brigid tossed her curly hair. “I’m not interested in your problems anymore. I’ve got a new man and he’s got money. Not just drips and drabs like you and that poor old stick you cadge yours from, but a good living. He’s got a house in Oscastle, and a shop, and he has nice clothes and a walking stick with a handle made of real whale ivory…”
“And a wife back home?” Tinwright said, none too nicely.
“What of it? She’s a sour old cow—he told me so. He’ll set me up in a place of my own and I won’t have to live in this bloody place anymore and let Conary feel my bubs just to earn my wages.”
“But Brigid, I’m in terrible trouble… !”
“And who put you there, Matt Tinwright? You did. And who’s got to get you out? None other than the same person. Learn that lesson and you’ll be halfway to being a man instead of a boy and a fool.”
She turned and walked briskly away, but only got a few steps before she turned back. Her face had softened a little. “I don’t wish you harm, Matty. You and I had our laughs, and you’re not a bad sort. But you can’t build a house on water. You have to find a place to stand.”
She left him then. For all his years of chasing the poetic muse, he could not think of a word to say.
“Oh. It’s you.” Her dark eyes seemed to take up half her face. Elan M’Cory was frighteningly thin—she had not eaten a full meal since she had taken the tanglewife’s potion many days ago. “I thought it was that cruel, red-faced woman.”
Tinwright sighed. “Brigid is not cruel.”
“Do not defend her just because you have had your way with her. I am not a child—I know how the world is wagged. And she is cruel. She tried to pour soup down my throat. She nearly drowned me.”
“She was trying to get you to eat. You must eat, Elan.” He sat down on the end of the bed. It was a cheap, frail thing and it creaked under his weight. “Please, my lady, you will make yourself ill…”
“Make myself ill? Who was it that did this to me, I ask you? Who tricked me when I would have ended it all?”
Tinwright hung his head. She had been like this since she had awakened, furious and argumentative or sad and silent, but always miserable. No wonder Brigid refused to come anymore. He couldn’t blame himself for not wanting to see the woman he loved take her own life, but he certainly could have wished things might have gone better. “I did,” was all he said. It was easier not to argue. As it was, he heard her doleful voice in his head for hours after he left her. He had not been able to write a line in days, and just at a time when he had begun to think he was actually finding his way.
“All I asked of you was the smallest thing—a gift of kindness.” She closed her eyes and let herself sink back into the cushion. “You say you love me, say it over and over again, but did you bring me what I wanted? A droplet of soul’s peace, that was all I asked. A simple thing.”