Shadowplay

She turned toward him and brushed back the veil to stare with cool, gray eyes. Her skin would be pale at the best of times, but here, on this dank, overcast day, with her black clothes and hat, her face almost disappeared ex¬cept for her eyes and fever-red mouth. "Who are you?"

He suppressed an exultant shout. She had asked his name! "Matthias Tinwright, my lady." He made his best bow and prepared to kiss her hand, but it did not emerge from the dark folds of her cloak. "A humble poet. I was bard to Princess Briony." He realized phrasing things that way might seem disloyal, not to mention suggesting he was out of work. "I am bard to Princess Briony," he said, putting on his best, most pious aspect. "Because, with the mercy of Zoria and the Three, she will come back to us."

An expression he could not read passed across Elan M'Cory's face as she turned slowly back to the view. Why did she wear those widow's clothes, when he knew for a fact-he had pursued the questionacarefully-that she was not married? Was it truly in mourning for Gailon Tolly? They had not even been betrothed, or so at least the servants said. Many of them thought her a little mad, but Tinwright didn't care. One view of her with her hair hanging copper-brown against her white neck, her large, sad eyes watching nothing as the rest laughed and gibed at one of Puzzle's entertainments, and he had been smitten.

He hesitated, unsure of whether to go or not.

"A poet," she said suddenly. "Truly?"

He suppressed a boast and thus surprised himself."I have long called my¬self so. Sometimes I doubt my skills."

She turned again and looked at him with a little more interest. "But surely this is a poet's world, Master…"

"Tinwright."

"Master Tinwright. Surely this your time of glory. Legends of the old days walk beneath the sun. Men are killed and no one can say why. Ghosts walk the battlements." She smiled, but it was not pleasant to see. Tinwright took a step back. "Do you know, I have even heard that mariners have lately returned with tales of a new continent in the west beyond the Smoking IsKinds,a great, unexplored land full of savages and gold.'Think of it! I'erhaps there are plaees where life still runs strong, where people are full of hope."

"Why should that not be true of this place, Lady Elan? Are we truly so weak and hopeless?"

She laughed, a small sound like scissors cutting string. "This place? Our world is old, Master Tinwright. Old and palsied-doddering, and even the young ones gasping in their cots. The end is coming soon, don't you think?"

While he was considering what to say to this strange assertion, he heard noises and looked up to see two young women hurrying along the battle¬ments toward them, slipping a little on the wet stones in their haste. He rec¬ognized them as Princess Briony's ladies-in-waiting-the yellow-haired one was Rose or some other such flower name. They looked at Tinwright suspiciously as they approached, and for the first time he wished he was wearing better clothes. Oddly, it had not occurred to him during his con¬versation with Elan M'Cory.

"Lady Elan," the dark one cried, "you should not be walking here by yourself! Not after what happened to the princess!

She laughed. "What, you think someone will climb the wall of the I

Ah, but you are wrong, thought Tinwright: if Briony Eddon was the bright morning sun, Elan M'Cory was the sullen, alluring moon. In truth, he thought, his mind as always leaping to the tropes of myth and story, the goddess Mesiya must look much like this, so pale and mysterious, she who walks the night sky with her retinue oj clouds.

He remembered then that Mesiya was the wife of Erivor and mother of the Eddon family line, or so it was claimed, her wolf their battle-standard. How quickly these poetic thoughts grew muddled…

"Come with us," the two ladies-in-waiting were saying, tugging gently at the black-clad Elan's arms. "It is damp here-you will catch your death."

"Ho!" a voice cried from below, lazy and cheerful. "There you are."

"Never fear," Elan M'Cory said, but so quietly that only Tinwright heard her. "It has caught me instead."

Hendon Tolly stood at the base of the wall on the I

"Surely you should go and lie down instead," said yellow-haired Rose, almost whispering. "Let us take care of you, Lady Elan."

"No, if my brother-in-law calls me, I must go." She turned to Tinwright "It has been good speaking with you, Master Poet. If you think ol any, an-swer to my question, I shall be interested to know. It seems to me that things move more quickly toward an ending every day."

"I am waiting, my lady!" Hendon Tolly seemed full of rich humor, as though at a joke only he understood. "I have things I wish to show you."

She turned and walked behind the ladies, heading back toward the steps that Tinwright had climbed and the waiting master of Southmarch.Just be fore she reached them, when Tolly had looked away to talk to his guards, she turned back toward Tinwright for a brief moment. He thought she might nod or give some other sign of farewell, but she only looked at him with an expression as bizarrely full of mixed shame and excitement as a dog who has been caught gorging on the last of the family's di

Matt Tinwright would see that face again and again in nightmares.

Briony wriggled, trying to ease herself. The scarf she had borrowed from one of Idite's daughters bound her breasts securely, but left an uncomfort-able knot in the center of her back.

"Do the clothes fit?" Shaso had put on something similar to the loose homespun garments that one of the servants had brought to Briony. The pants were long; she had rolled them so they would not drag on the floor and trip her, but she was pleased to find that the rough shirt, though large, was not so big as to hinder her movements.

"Well enough, I suppose," she said. "Why am I wearing them?"

"Because you are going to learn something new." He was holding a bun¬dle wrapped in oiled cloth, which he tucked under his arm, then led her down the hall and out to the courtyard. The rain had stopped but the sky was still heavy with dark clouds and the stones of the courtyard were wet. He gestured for her to sit down on the edge of the stone planter that housed the courtyard's lone quince tree, bare now except for the last few shriveled fruits the birds had not taken. "That should be dry."

"What am I going to learn?"

He scowled. "The first thing you must learn, like all Eddons, is to be pa¬tient. You are better at it than your brother-but not much." He raised his

hand. NO, do not think of him. I shouldn't have spoken of him. We must pray that he is safe."

She nodded, willing her eyes to stay dry. Poor Barrick! Zoria, watch over his every moment. Put your shield above him, wherever he is.

"I would not have chosen to teach you swordplay, had you not wished it and your father not have given in to your whim." Shaso held up his hand again. "Remember-patience! But I have, and you have learned to fight well, for a woman. It is not the nature of women to fight, after all."

Again she started to speak, but she knew the look in the old man's eyes and did not have the strength for another argument. She closed her mouth.

"But whatever happens in the days to come, I think you will not be car¬rying a sword. You will not need one here, and if we leave this place we will go in secret." He placed his bundle down on the ground beside him, put his hand in and pulled out a wooden dowel that was only a little shorter than Briony's forearm. "I have taught you something of how to use a poniard, but primarily how to use it in combination with a sword. So now I am going to teach you how a Tuani fights without a sword. Stand up." He took the dowel in his fist. "Pretend this is a knife. Protect yourself."