(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay Read Online Free Page B

“It still might. So I want you to swear the same to me.” He fixed her with his dark eyes. This time it was not the imperious stare of old, the teacher’s stare—there was actually something pleading in it.
    “You shame me when you remind me what you did for my family, Shaso. And you don’t take credit for your own stubbornness. But yes, I hear you, and yes, I understand. I’ll listen to what you say. I’ll do what you think is best.”
    “Always? No matter how you may doubt me? No matter how angry I make you by not explaining my every thought?”
    A quiet hiss startled Briony, until she realized it was the girl Ena, laughing quietly as she scrubbed out the soup pot. It was humiliating, but it would be more shameful still to continue arguing like a child. “Very well. I swear on the green blood of Erivor, my family’s patron. Is that good enough?”
    “You should be careful when you make oaths on Egye-var, Highness,” said Ena cheerfully, “especially here in the middle of the waters. He hears.”
    “What are you talking about? If I swear to Erivor, I mean it.” She turned to Shaso. “Are you satisfied now?”
    He smiled, but it was only a grim flash of teeth, an old predator’s reflex. “I will not be satisfied with anything until Hendon Tolly is dead and whoever arranged Kendrick’s death has joined him. But I accept your promise.” He winced as he straightened his legs. Briony looked away: even though the Skimmer girl had bandaged the worst sores from the shackles, he was still covered with ugly scrapes and bruises and his limbs were disturbingly thin. “Now, tell me what has happened—everything you can remember. Little news was brought to me in my cell, and I could make small sense out of what you told me last night.”
    Briony proceeded as best she could, although it was difficult to summon up all that had happened in the months Shaso dan-Heza had been locked in the stronghold, let alone make a sensible tale of it. She told him of Barrick’s fever and of Avin Brone’s spy who claimed to have seen agents of the Autarch of Xis in the Tolly’s great house at Summerfield Court. She told him about the caravan apparently attacked by the fairies, of Guard Captain Vansen’s expedition and what happened to them, and of the advancing army of the Twilight People that had apparently invaded and secured the mainland city of Southmarch across Brenn’s Bay, leaving only the castle free. She even told him of the strange potboy Gil and his dreams, or at least what little about them she could remember.
    Although the Skimmer girl had shown no other signs of paying attention to the bizarre catalogue of events, when she heard Gil’s pronouncements about Barrick, Ena put down her washing and sat up straight. “Porcupine’s eye? He said to beware the Porcupine’s eye?”
    “Yes, what of it?”
    “The Porcupine-woman is one of the most ill-named of all the Old Ones,” Ena said seriously. “She is death’s companion.”
    “What does that mean?” Briony asked. “And how would you know?”
    The secretive smile stretched the girl’s wide mouth again, but her eyes did not meet Briony’s. “Even on Skimmer’s Lagoon, we know some important things.”
    “Enough,” said Shaso angrily. “I will sleep today—I do not like being a burden. When the sun goes down, we will leave. Girl,” he said to Ena, “take us to the Marrinswalk coast and then your service will be over.”
    “As long as you eat something else before we leave,” Ena told him. “More soup—you barely touched what I gave you. I promised my father I would keep you safe, and if you collapse again he will be angry.”
    Shaso looked at her as if she might be mocking him. She stared back, unfraid. “Then I will eat,” he said at last.
     
    Briony spent much of the afternoon staring out at the bay, fearful of seeing boats coming toward the island. When she got too cold at last, she went in and warmed herself at the fire.
    On her way back to