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not destroyed,’ he said, although he was sorely wounded. ‘Not yet . . . not yet . . .’ ”
     
    It was only when the pause had gone on so long that Barrick found himself nodding toward sleep that he finally looked up. “Bird? Skurn? What happened next?” His eyes widened. “Where are you?”
    A few moments later a mostly black shape flapped down out of the perpetual gray sky with a horrid something wriggling in its black beak.
    “Urm,” it said, while most of the legs were still hanging out, kicking in hopeless protest. “Lovely. Us’ll finish the tale later. Spotted a whole nest of ‘these, us has. Taste just like dead mouse ‘fore it bloats too far and bursts. Shall us fetch you one or two?”
    “Oh, gods,” groaned Barrick as he turned away in disgust. “Wherever you are, alive or dead or sleeping, please give me strength.”
    The raven sniffed at his foolishness. “Praying for strength be not enough. For us to stay strong, us has to eat.”

PART ONE
    VEIL

1
    The Sham Crown
    “As far as I can discover, there is no place upon the two continents or the islands of the sea that is without legends of the fairy folk. But whether they once lived in all these places or their memory was brought to the places by men when they came, no one can say.”
    —from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
     
     
    T HE TEMPLE BELL WAS RINGING for midday prayers. Briony felt a clutch of shame—she was already an hour later than she had promised, in large part because of Lord Jino and his shrewd, seemingly endless questions.
    “Please, my lord,” she told him as she rose to her feet. “I apologize, but I truly must go to see my friends.” So hard after months of rough living to get the knack of ladylike movement and speech once more—it felt at least as false as any part she’d played for the theater troupe. “I crave your pardon.”
    “By friends, you mean the players?” Erasmias Jino cocked a stylishly plucked eyebrow. The Syannese lord looked like a fop, but that was only the Syannese style: Jino was renowned for his shrewdness and had also killed three men in duels decreed by the Court of Honor. “Surely, your Highness, you are not still pretending that such as you could truly be friends with . . . such as those. They enabled you to travel in secrecy—a clever stratagem when traveling through unsafe country on dangerous roads—but the time for that imposture is over.”
    “Nevertheless, I must go to see them. It is my duty.” She had to admit that much of what he said was true. She hadn’t treated the players as true friends, but had kept all that was most important about herself a secret. They had opened their lives to her but Briony Eddon had not reciprocated, nor even come close: they had been honest, she had been the opposite.
    Well, most of them had been honest. “I understand you have released all except Finn Teodoros. He claimed to bear messages for your king from Lord Brone. I am Avin Brone’s true monarch and he would not have them kept from me, I know. I would like to hear those messages.”
    Jino smiled and brushed his fingers through his beard. “Perhaps you will, but that is for my master King Enander to decide, Princess Briony. He will see you later today.” The juxtaposition of titles was no accident: Jino was reminding her that she stood below the Syannese king in precedence, and would have even in her own country—but she was not, most definitely not, in her own country.
    Lord Jino rose with a smooth grace most women would have envied. “Come. I will take you to the players now.”
    Father gone, Kendrick gone, Barrick . . . She fought to keep the tears that suddenly trembled on her lower lid from running over. Shaso, and now Dawet. All gone, most of them dead—maybe all of them . . . She tried to steady herself before the Syannese official noticed. And now I must say goodbye to Makewell’s Men as well. It was a strange feeling, this loneliness. Always before she