Shadowplay Read online

  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 bundle 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 patient. 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 carrying 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.”

  He took a step toward her, swept the dowel down. She threw her hands up and shuffled backward.

  “Wrong, child.” He handed the bar of wood to her. “Do the same to me.”

  She looked at him, uncertain, then took a step forward, stabbing toward his chest, but unable to keep herself from holding back a little. Shaso put up a hand.

  “No. Strike hard. I promise you will not hurt me.”

  She took a breath and then lunged. His hand flew out so quickly she almost could not see it move, knocking her hand aside even as Shaso himself stepped toward her, then put his leg behind her and pushed with his other hand against her neck. Just before she fell backward over his leg he caught at the sleeve of her shirt and kept her upright. He gently took the wooden rod out of her hand.

  “Now you try what I have done.”

  It took her a dozen tries before she could get the trick of moving forward at the same time as she deflected his attack—it was different than swordfighting, far more intimate, the angles and speed affected by the small size of the weapon and the fact that she had no weapon of her own. When the old man was satisfied, he showed her several other blocks and leg-locks, and a few twisting moves meant not simply to deflect or stop an opponent’s thrust but to loose the weapon from his hand.

  The sun, climbing toward noon, finally made an appearance through the clouds. Briony was sweating now, and she had fallen down three or four times on the hard stones of the courtyard, bruising her knee and hip. By contrast, Shaso looked as calm and unruffled as when the lesson had first started.

  “Take some moments to catch your breath,” he said. “You are doing well.”

  “Why are you teaching me this?” she said. “Why now?”

  “Because you are not royalty any longer,” he said. “At least, you will have none of royalty’s privileges. No men to guard you, no castle walls to keep your enemies away. Are you ready to begin again?”

  She rubbed her aching hip, wondered if it was wrong to ask Zoria to grant Shaso a painful cramp—wondered if Zoria could even hear her, in this house of Tuan’s Great Mother. “I’m ready,” was all she said.

  They stopped once for water and so that Briony could eat some dried fruit and bread that a wide-eyed servant brought out into the courtyard. Later, several of the house’s women gathered under the covered walkway to watch, giggling inside their hooded robes, fascinated by the spectacle. Shaso showed her more unarmed blocks, grapple holds, kicks, and other methods of defending herself or even disarming an attacker, ways to break the arm of a man half again her size, or kick him in such a way that he would fight no more that day. When the old man was satisfied with her progress he brought out a second wooden dowel and gave it to her, then began to work with her on the skills of knife against knife.

  “Do not let your enemy get his blade between you and him once you have closed,” Shaso said. “Then even a backhand thrust can be fatal. Always turn it away, force the knife-hand out. There—see! If your enemy brings it too close, you can slash the tendons on the back of his hand or his wrist. But do not let him take your blade with his other hand.”

  By the time the sun had begun to slide behind the courtyard roof, and the women of the hadar had found even their deep curiosity satisfied and had gone back inside, Shaso let her stop and rest again. Her legs and arms were quivering with weariness and would not stop.

  “We are finished for today,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “But we will do this again tomorrow and the days after, until I can sleep at night.” He put the dowels back in the oilskin bundle. Some—

  thing else inside it clinked, but he closed the wrapping and she did not see what it was. “This is not the world you knew, Briony Eddon. This is not a World that anyone knows, and what it will become is yet to be seen. Your part may be great or small, but I am sworn to your family and I want you alive to play that part.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, but as she looked at the old man and saw that for all his seeming invincibility his hands were trembling as much as hers and his breathing was short and rapid, she was filled with misery and a kind of love. “I am sorry we had you imprisoned, Shaso. I am ashamed.”

  He gave her a strange look, not angry, but distant. “You did what you had to. As do we all, from the greatest to the smallest. Even the autarch in his palace is only a clay doll in the hands of the Great Mother.” He tucked his bundle under his arm.”Go now. You did well—for a woman, very well.”

  The moment of affection disappeared in a burst of irritation. “You keep saying that. Why shouldn’t a woman fight as well as a man?”

  “Some women can fight as well as some men, child,” he said with a sour smile. “But men are bigger, Briony, and stronger. Do you know what a lion is? It is a great cat that lives in the deserts near my country.”

  “I’ve seen one.”

  “Then you know its size and strength. The female lion is a great hunter, fierce and dangerous, a mighty killer. She brings down the gazelle and she slaughters the barking jackals that try to feed on her kill. But she gives way always before the male.”

  “But I don’t want to be a male lion,” Briony said. “I’d be happy just to chase away the jackals.”

  Shaso’s smile lightened, became something almost peaceful. “That, anyway, I can try to give you. Go now, and I will see you in the morning.”

  “Won’t I see you at supper?”

  “In this house, the men and women do not eat together in
the evening. It is the way of Tuan.” He turned and walked, with just the hint of a limp, across the courtyard.

  Dan-Mozan’s nephew was waiting for her in the hallway. She groaned quietly as he stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, eyes averted as though he had not yet noticed her, as though he had not been waiting here on purpose. All she wanted was to get into a hot bath, if such a thing could be found, and steam the aches from her muscles and the dirt from her scratched knees and feet.

  “You are wearing my clothes,” Talibo said.

  “Yes, and thank you. Your uncle loaned them to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lord Shaso wished me to practice knife-fighting.” She frowned at the expression of arrogant disbelief on his face, had to hold her tongue How dare he look at her that way—Briony Eddon, a princess of all the March Kingdoms? He was no older than she was. It was true that he was not a bad-looking boy, she thought as she looked at his liquid brown eyes, the wispy mustache on his upper lip, but from the way his every feeling showed on his face he was still most definitely a boy. Seeing this one, she could imagine how Ludis’ envoy Dawet dan-Faar must have looked in his youth, imagine the same look of youthful pride. Warrantless pride, she thought, annoyed: what had this brown-skinned boy ever done, living in a house, surrounded by women who deferred to him just because he was not a girl? “I have to go now,” she said. “Thank you again for the use of these clothes.”

  She brushed past him, aware that the young man had more to say but unwilling to stand around while he worked up the nerve to say it. She thought she could feel his eyes on her as she walked wearily back to the women’s quarters.

  8. An Unremarkable Man

  When Onyena was ordered to serve her sister Surazetn at the birth she became angry, and cried out that she would find some way to have vengeance on Sveros the Twilight, so when the three brothers were being born from Surazem’s blessed womb Onyena stole some of the old god’s essence. She went away in secret and used the seed of Sveros to make three children of her own, but she raised them to hate their father and all he made.

  —from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon

  AT TIMES LIKE THIS, when Pinimmon Vash had to look directly into his master’s pale, awful eyes, it was hard to remember that Autarch Sulepis had to be at least partly human. “All will be done, Golden One,” Vash assured him, praying silently to be dismissed and released. Sometimes just being near his young ruler made him feel queasy. “All will be done just as you say.”

  “Swiftly, old man. She has tried to escape me.” The autarch’s gaze slid upward until he seemed to be staring intently at something invisible to anyone else. “Besides, the gods . .. the gods are restless to be born.”

  Confused by this strange remark, Vash hesitated. Was it something that needed to be understood and answered, or was he at last free to scurry away on his errand? He might be the paramount minister of mighty Xis, the old courtier reflected with some bitterness, and thus in theory more powerful than most kings, but he had no more real authority than a child. Null, being a minister who must jump to serve the autarch’s every whim was much better than being a. former minister: the vulture shrines atop the Orchard Palace’s roofs were piled high with the bones of former ministers. “Yes, the gods, of course,” Vash said at last, with no idea of what he was agreeing to. “The gods must be born, it goes without .. .”

  “Then let it be done now. Or heaven itself will weep.” Despite his harsh words, Sulepis began to laugh in a most inappropriate way.

  Even as Vash hurried so swiftly from the bath chamber that he almost tripped over his own exquisite silk robes, he found himself hoping that one of the eunuchs shaving the autarch’s long, oiled limbs had accidentally tickled him. It would be disturbing to think the man with life-and-death power over oneself and virtually every other human being on the continent had just giggled like a madman for no reason.

  Partly human, Vash reminded himself. He must be at least partly human. Even if the autarch’s father Parnad had also been a living god, the autarch’s mother must surely have been a mortal woman, since she had come to the Seclusion as the gift of a foreign king. But whatever was mixed in with the heritage of godlike (although now fairly inarguably dead) Parnad, few mortal traits had made their way down to the son. The young autarch was as bright-eyed, remorseless, and inscrutable as his family’s heraldic falcon. Sulepis was also full of inexplicable, seemingly mad ideas, as proved by this latest strange whim—the errand on which Vash now bustled toward the guard barracks.

  As he left the guarded fastness of the Mandrake Court and hurried through the cavernous ministerial audience chamber at the heart of the Pomegranate Court, lesser folk scattered from his path like pigeons, as frightened of his anger as he was terrified of the autarch’s. Pinimmon Vash reminded himself he should conduct a full sacrifice to Nushash and the other gods soon. After all, he was a very fortunate man—not just to have risen so high in the world, but also to have survived so many years of the father’s autarchy and this first year of the son’s: at least nine of Parnad’s other high ministers had been put to death just in the short months of Sulepis’ reign. In fact, should Vash need an example of how lucky he was compared to some, he only had to think about the man he was going to see, Hijam Marukh, the new captain of the Leopard guards—or more to the point, think about Marukh’s predecessor, the peasant-soldier Jeddin.

  Even Pinimmon Vash, no stranger to torture and execution, had been disturbed by the agonies visited upon the former Leopard captain. The autarch had ordered the entertainment conducted in the famous Lepthian library, so he could read while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Vash had watched with well-hidden terror as the living god danced his gold fingerstalls in the air in rhythm with Jeddin’s shrieks, as though enjoying a charming performance. Many nights Vash still saw the terrible sights in his dreams, and the memory of the captain’s agonized screaming haunted his waking mind as well. Near the end of the prisoner’s suffering, Sulepis had even called for real musicians to play a careful, improvised accompaniment to his horrendous cries. At points, Sulepis had even sung along.

  Vash had seen almost everything in his more than twenty years of service, but he had never seen anything like the young autarch.

  But how could an ordinary man judge whether or not a god was mad?

  “This makes no sense,” said Hijam Marukh.

  “You are foolish to say so,” Vash hissed at him.

  The officer known as Stoneheart allowed only a lifted eyebrow to animate his otherwise inexpressive face, but Vash could see that Marukh had realized his error—the kind that in Xis could swiftly prove fatal. Recently promoted to kiliarch, or captain, the Leopards’ squat, muscular new master had survived countless major battles and deadly skirmishes, but he was not quite so used to the dangers of the Xixian court, where it was assumed that every public word and most private ones would be overheard by someone, and that one of those listeners likely either wanted or needed you dead. Marukh might have been cut, stabbed, and scorched so many times that his dark skin was covered in white stripes like a camp mongrel’s, might have earned his famous nickname by passing unmoved through the worst carnage of war, but this was not the battlefield. In the Orchard Palace no man’s death came at in him from the front or in plain sight.

  “Of course,” Hijam Stoneheart said now slowly and clearly for the benefit of listening ears, “the Golden One must have his contest if he wills it so. But I am just a soldier and I don’t understand such things. Explain to me, Vash. What good is there in having my men fight with each other? Already several are badly wounded and will need weeks of healing.”

  Vash took a breath. Nobody was obviously eavesdropping, but that meant nothing. “First of all, the Golden One is much wiser than we are, so perhaps we are not clever enough to understand his reasons—all we can know is that they must be good. Second, I must point out to you that it isn’t your men, the Leopards, who are fighting for the honor of the autar
ch’s special mission, Marukh. It is the White Hounds, and although they are valuable fighters they are only barbarians.”

  Vash had no more idea than the captain of why Sulepis had demanded a contest of strength among his famous troop of White Hounds, foreign mercenaries whose fathers and grandfathers had come to Xand from the northern continent, but as Vash knew better than almost anyone, sometimes gods-on-earth just did things like that. When the autarch had woken from a prophetic dream one morning in the first weeks of his rule and ordered the destruction of all the wild cranes in the land of Xis, it had been Paramount Minister Vash who had called the lower ministers to the Pomegranate Court to make the autarch’s wishes known, and hundreds of thousands of the birds had been killed. When another day the autarch declared that every axhead shark in the city’s saltwater canals should be caught and dispatched, the streets of the capital stank with rotting shark flesh for months afterward.

  Vash forced his attention back to the combat. The abruptness of the autarch’s demand had forced them to improvise this arena here in an unused audience chamber in the Tamarind Court, since the autarch’s miners and cannoneers were all over the parade field and could not move their equipment on such sudden notice, even at threat of their lives—some of the artillery pieces weighed tons. Two sweaty men were struggling now in the makeshift ring. One was big by any ordinary standard and muscled like a bullock, but his yellow-bearded opponent was a true giant of a man, a head taller, with shoulders wide as the bed of an oxcart. This fair-haired monster clearly had the upper hand and even seemed to be toying with his adversary.