Shadowplay

For some reason, the guard captain Ferras Vansen came to her mind- but that was nonsense! What was he to her, with his ordinary face and his ordinary brown hair and his posture so carefully correct it almost seemed like a kind of swagger? If she recognized now that he had not been as guilty in the death of her older brother as she had once felt, he was still nothing to her-a common soldier, a functionary, a man who no doubt thought lit¬tle beyond the barracks and the tavern, and likely spent what spare time he had putting his hands up the dresses of tavern wenches.

Still, it was odd that she should see his thoughtful face just now, that she should think of him so suddenly, and almost fondly…

Merola

Briony abruplly felt a kind of panic steal over her. Poor Auntie! She must be mad with grief and worry, both twins gone, the whole order of life over¬turned, but Merola

Oh, Auntie, I will give you such a hug when I come back, it will almost crack your bones! And I'll kiss your old cheeks pink! You will be so astonished! The duchess would cry of course-she always did for happy things, scarcely ever for sad. And you'll be so proud of me. "You wise girl," you'll say to me. "Just what your father would have done. And so brave…!"

Briony nodded and drowsed, thinking about that day to come, so easy to imagine in every way except how it might actually come to pass.

They reached the hilly north Marrinswalk coast just as the rising sun warmed the storm clouds from black to bruised gray, rowing across the empty cove to within a few yards of the shore. Briony bunched the home¬spun skirt Ena had given her around her thighs and helped the Skimmer girl guide the hull up onto the wet sand. The wind was stingingly cold, the saltgrass and beach heather along the dunes rippling as if in imitation of the shallow wavelets frothing on the bay.

"Where are we?" she asked.

Shaso wrung water out of his saggy clothes. Just as Briony had been clothed in Ena's spares, he wore one of Turley's baggy, salt-bleached shirts and a pair of the Skimmer's plain, knee-length breeches. As he surveyed the surrounding hills, his leathery, wrinkled face gaunt from his long impris¬onment, Shaso dan-Heza looked like some ancient spirit dressed in a child's castoff clothing. "Somewhere not far from Kinemarket, I'd say, about three or four days' walk from Oscastle."

"Kinemarket is that way." Ena pointed east. "On the far side of these hills, south of the coast road. You could be there before the sun lifts over the top."

"Only if we start walking," said Shaso.

"What on earth will we do in Kinemarket?" Briony had never been there, but knew it was a small town with a yearly fair that paid a decent amount of revenue to the throne. She also dimly remembered that some river passed through it or near it. In any case, it might as well have been

named Tiny or Unimportant as far as she was concerned just now. "There's nothing there!"

"Except food-and we will need some of that, don't you think?" said Shaso. "We ca

"Where are we going after that?"

"Toward Oscastle."

"Why?"

"Enough questions." He gave her a look that would have made most people quail, but Briony was not so easily put off.

"You said you would make the choices, and I agreed. I never said that I wouldn't ask why, and you never said you wouldn't answer."

He growled under his breath. "Try your questions again when the road is under our feet." He turned to Ena. "Give your father my thanks, girl."

"Her father didn't row us." Briony was still shamed that she had argued with the young woman about landing at M'Helan's Rock. "I owe you a kindness," she told the girl with as much queenly graciousness as she could muster. "I won't forget."

"I'm sure you won't, Lady." Ena made a swift and not very reverent courtesy.

Well, she's seen me sleeping, drooling spittle down my chin. I suppose it would he a bit much to expect her to treat me like Zoria the Fair. Still, Briony wasn't entirely certain she was going to like being a princess without a throne or a castle or any of the privileges that, while she had been quick to scorn them, she had grown rather used to. "Thanks, in any case."

"Good luck to you both, Lady, Lord." Ena took a step, then stopped and turned around. "Holy Diver lift me, I almost forgot-Father would have had me ski

Before Briony or Shaso could say anything, the Skimmer girl scooted the wooden rowboat back down the wet sand and into the water, then waded with it out into the cove. She swung herself onto the bench as gracefully as a trick rider vaulting onto a horse; a heartbeat or two later the oars were in the water and the boat was moving outward against the wind, bobbing on each line of coursing waves.

Briony stood watching as the girl and her boat disappeared. She sud-denly felt very lonely and very weary.

"A reliable thing about villages, or cities for that matter," said Shaso sourly, "is that they will not walk to us." He pointed across the dunes to the hills and their ragged covering of bushes and low trees. "Shall we begin, or do you have some pressing reason for us to keep standing here until some¬one notices us?"

She knew she should be grateful his old fire was coming back, but just now she wasn't.

His vinegary moment seemed to have tired Shaso, too. He kept his head down and didn't talk as they walked over the cold dunes toward a path that ran along the begi

Briony had at first wished to pursue the question of why they were going to Oscastle, Marrinswalk's leading city but still a bit of a backwater, and what his plans were when they reached the place, but she found her¬self just as happy to save her strength for walking. The wind, which had first had been steadily at their backs, now swung around and began to blow full into their faces with stinging force, making every step feel like a climb up steep stairs. The heavy gray clouds hung so low overhead it almost seemed to Briony she could reach up and sink her fingers into them. She was grate¬ful for the thick wool cloaks the Skimmers had given them, but they were still damp with rainwater and Briony's felt heavy as lead. Her court dresses, for all their discomforts, suddenly did not seem so bad: at least they had been dry and warm.

After perhaps an hour Briony began to see signs of habitation-a few crofters' huts on hilltops, surrounded by trees. Some had snioke swirling from the holes in their roofs, or even from crooked chimneys, and Briony broke her long silence to ask Shaso if they could not stop at one of them for long enough to get warm again.

He shook his head. "The fewer the people, the greater the danger some¬one will remember us. Hendon Tolly and his men have no doubt begun to wonder whether we might have left the castle entirely, and soon they will be asking questions in every town along the coast of Bre