Fortress of Ice

i

THEY HAD A PANFUL OF JAM-FILLED TREATS, AND TEA FROM THE KETTLE, THE baker’s boy being so obliging as to run a heavy tray straight upstairs, and if they spoiled their supper, they were satisfied. The royal table hosted the duke of Osenan tonight, and Aewyn was ever glad enough to forage and not to have to sit still at his father’s table, at some long-winded state dinner. The fireside in his own room was ever so much nicer, himself and his brother lying on the rug by a well-fed fire, having dessert first. There were two kinds of sausage for later, three kinds of cheese, and a crusty loaf, besides their treats, and the tea, which they drank down by the cupful.

They were warm again, after their battle. The wind howled about the tall windows, sleet rattling against the diamond panes, and they had drawn the drapes against the cold. The fire before them made towers and battlements of coals, glowing red walls that tumbled and sent up sparks into the dark of the flue, which they imagined as the dark of night above the world.

It was Aewyn’s own room, his private realm—at fifteen going on sixteen he had gained this privacy from his father: his own quarters, near if not next to the king’s and the queen’s chambers, but with his own door and a separate foyer room for his guard and a second small sleeping room for his two constant domestic servants—they were his father’s guard and his father’s staff, in all truth, but they were the same men who had been attending him since he was first out and about the halls and the courtyards on his own recognizance, so they were as good as his.

Most of all he had his own sitting room and his own bedchamber, and this meant Nurse had finally retired to her own numerous children down in Dary, beyond the city walls.

And that meant he no longer had anyone to make him sit in a chair, at a table, like a proper boy, and be served by servants. Otter preferred the fireside, and the warm stones, and the prince of Ylesuin found the close warmth of the fire a thorough delight, the best place in the room. They had their tray of food beside them, and a pitcher of watered wine—very watered, it was—and their book, which Otter read to them both—a record, really, of the properties and the building of the royal lodge at Maedishill. The account had all its local legendry, and it had maps, the most wonderful colored and whimsically detailed maps of a place Aewyn had known from earliest childhood.

“Here,” Aewyn said, tracing a line with his finger, “here is the spring and its outflow. And just down from here, it joins this larger brook.” In his mind was a wonderful place, on an autumn day when he was about five. He had sailed leaf-barges down the current from the spring, to see them wreck in the great rapids of the great brook—he could stride across it now—where the water flowed over rounded rocks. He would never, now, admit to having sailed leaf-boats, but he cherished the memory of them. He snatched a bite of sweet and pointed with the stick of crust to the place where the rapids ended and the brook ran by the lodge. “A falls there, with an old log. See, even the log is on the map. Brother Siene drew it. I remember him. He had a white beard down to his belt. He was caretaker there until I was seven.”

“Why do you have a map of the lodge?”

“Well, because Brother Siene loved to do maps, and he lived there alone most of the time, so he just did. But now anyone who ever wants to know about Maedishill can look in this book and see the lodge and know all its properties, and how far they go, and where the next holding starts. It makes it a legal record, because Brother Siene wrote a date on it, and the library has a date when the book came here. That proves, for instance, that it’s my father’s brook. It starts here, where it comes out of the rocks, so he has title over it until it reaches the boundary with the farmers, and if it had any fish in it—it doesn’t, no matter that Brother Siene drew them in—they would be his only until they reach the boundary.”

“The fish wouldn’t know that,” Otter remarked, so soberly Aewyn had to laugh.

“Fish don’t know anything.”

“I don’t know if they do. Maybe they do.” Otter touched the painted fish with his fingers, ever so carefully. “I like his laughing fish.”

“So do I,” Aewyn said, remembering sun on water, sparkling rays through thick green leaves. “My mother and I used to go there for a month before Papa could get time to come, and when he did, everything would change. Messengers, messengers at all hours, and lords coming in for visits with dozens of servants, all full of arguments, with papers to read, and if two came, there wasn’t room for the second one, and there was dust all over everything if there wasn’t mud, just from the horses. They’d trample the grass down and spoil the meadow, they’d get drunk in the great room, and their sons would be out chasing the rabbits and trying to shoot them. Mother had the duke of Marisyn’s sons and his servants rounded up by her guard, and Papa—my father—said if he had his choice, he was going to run away to Far Sassury and not tell anybody where he was going. But the next year, the grass would be green again and the brook would have its moss back, and it would be just us, until Papa came.”

“No!” a feminine squeal came from the guards’ room, and several men laughed. “The scriptures is against immodesty,” the girl said, “an’ ye keep your nasty hands t’ yourself.”

There were remarks below hearing, and then the girl began citing scripture: “Cursed is the flesh and the desires of it, cursed is the lustful man and the issue of his…”

Aewyn surged up to his feet, outraged. “Hush, now, hush,” his guards were saying, wishing to keep the peace in the hall, but the undercook’s daughter was a righteous girl: so she said at every chance. Madelys was her name, she had probably come up looking for used dishes, and she was too holy for a nunnery, was what everyone said—which was why Cook thought she was proper enough to be waiting on a young lord in his own premises— and spying, meanwhile, on his household.

It was a very furious and upset Madelys, as Aewyn faced the hall— Madelys with her serving tray and used dishes snatched under her arm and a fury on her thin face. She scarcely bobbed a curtsy as she stood there confronting him and glaring at his bodyguards.

“Out!” Aewyn said.

“It ain’t me!” Madelys said, with not a Your Highness nor any other grace. “It ain’t me at any fault. They was pullin’ my skirt!”

“No one ha’ touched the lass, Your Highness.” This from his oldest guard, Selmyn, and if he had any discernment in him, or cared at the moment, this was the source of truth, far more than this surly girl.

“Out,” Aewyn said the second time, and not loudly at all. If he were his father, Cook’s daughter would already have been running; but he was not, and she stood there glaring at him like a badger in its den. He said, more harshly: “Get out!”

She hunched her tray closer, turned, and stalked out the door, which one of his guards opened for her, without a second curtsy or a mollifying word.

He was truly not supposed to swear. His father and his mother would hear about it if he did, though not, perhaps, from these men. He turned a carefully serene face toward them, then walked with a certain embarrassed dignity back to the fireside, where Otter stood utterly dismayed.

“Madelys,” Aewyn said, his face burning, “is the only maid Mother will let come through my doors, and she has to come because the menservants aren’t to touch the dishes.”

“Do you have to mind what she says?” Otter asked him. “Are we in trouble?”

“No.” He plumped down whence he had risen, signaling Otter to do the same. “Oh, I could be rid of her like that if I took my nurse back. I know Nurse would send her away. But I’m too old for Nurse telling me what to eat and when to eat and always scolding me about my clothes.” He missed Nurse. Sometimes he missed her keenly. But when she visited, as she did, she always hugged him like a baby, straightened his hair, and more particularly, would never let him sit on the floor with his half brother. The notion of pretending they were in Gran’s little house in Amefel just would never occur to Nurse, who had one notion of the way things should be and never left it. “Madelys is just a fool, is all. She really does want to be a nun, but you have to have a dowry for that, and being undercook’s third daughter, she has two sisters to marry first.” He gave a laugh. “If she doesn’t mend her ways, I’ll save up my market pennies for a year and give her one.”

Otter didn’t seem to understand. He shot a troubled look toward the short hallway and the door.

“It’s a joke, goose.”

Otter showed a shy smile, then. His country brother was sometimes slow to laugh at angry people, although he had a very quick wit in private. Aewyn fell onto his belly and shut the little book, which was done up in goatskin with a painted picture of the lodge in a little medallion. “It’s a silly little book. It was a present, really. Brother Siene used to be a copyist in the monastery—he was Bryalt—and he could read, besides. He made it for my father to give to my mother on her birthday: he can’t give her the lodge, which he would like to have done, because she’s Elwynim and he can’t give away Guelen land, but he could give it to me. He says he will, when I’m nineteen. And my mother gave me the book because I was always borrowing it.”

“Will you live there when you can?”

“As often as I can. I’ll put fish in the brook. I’m tired of waiting to see one.”

That, Otter clearly thought was worth laughing at. Aewyn laughed, himself, and rolled onto his back on the bearskin rug, looking up at the laquear ceiling. The beams were dark polished wood, with boars’ heads set where they met the walls. The center of the squares had sheaves of barley in some, and deer in others, with the crest of Guelessar in the centermost, in gold. He had never really seen these things for what they were, until Otter came: like the book, they were the accounting of the wealth of the kingdom, which was his to enjoy and spread about in charity, dispensing justice and making sure the wealth went where it ought, to men of peace. Otter had grown up otherwise, in a little farmhouse, over in Amefel, with his gran, who was a wisewoman, but a witch, really, as the Quinalt saw it, and who was not really Otter’s own grandmother. Otter had never ridden a horse, only practiced with a wooden sword, with Paisi, who was Gran’s real grandson. Paisi was peasant-born, and in Guelessar, Paisi, being a farmer, would not have known about swords, but he had learned a little. It was all very different where Otter had lived. There had been wars in Amefel. And even the farmers had learned to fight.

The wind blew at the windows and fluttered the fire in the fireplace.

“When the storm blows itself out,” Aewyn said, “we could go riding.” He had a second, glum thought. “If it weren’t holiday coming. If the weather clears by tomorrow, we could do it, but it doesn’t sound like it out there, does it?”

“No.”

A deep sigh. “Besides, it’s a great fuss, getting the horses up from pasture, then only having to send them down again. But we shall go after. There’ll still be snow all about. And by then the merchants will wear down the snow. And then—” He had brought out the book and shown Otter this special prize of his, and now he had a keen notion what would be a great treat. “Then, after Festival, we shall go to the lodge. It’s not that far. The brook may be frozen, but you can see it all the same. We can spend a night or two there.”

“If your father will let us,” Otter said.

“I’ll tell you what’s not in the book,” Aewyn said, rolling back onto his stomach and his elbows, looking straight into Otter’s pale gray eyes. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “The lodge has its own ghost.”

“A haunt?” Otter asked, duly impressed.

“It’s supposed to be a grave from before the lodge was built, and nobody knew it was there, nor ever has found it. But late at night pans fall in the scullery, and footsteps go up and down the stairs.”

Otter’s eyes were wide as could be. “Is it a man or a woman?”

“Her. It’s a lady. Well, a woman. She could be a farmer or a herder. Nobody knows. But cakes go missing out of the kitchen, and everyone says it’s the ghost.”

Now Otter looked doubtful and grinned. “I can think of another way cakes disappear.”

Aewyn laughed, too. “We’ll stay up late and see if cakes disappear,” he said. “We just have to endure Festival to get there.”

“Day after tomorrow,” Otter said.

“Three days earlier than yours, in Amefel, isn’t it? And no dancing.” He understood that Otter was Bryalt, like his mother. “I like your holidays much better. But I daren’t say that, being the Prince. I have to be good. Have you tried your clothes?”

“Clothes?” Otter asked, confused, so he hoped he had not spoiled their father’s surprise.

“Papa sent some. For the whole Festival. Mother said so. I thought they’d have come this morning. They were supposed to.”

“I haven’t seen them.”

“Oh, well, they’ll be there. Probably the servants are brushing them. They had better be there.”

“Where am I supposed to wear them?”

“To services every day.”

Otter wore a look of slight dismay. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that.

“Papa says you should sit with us in sanctuary,” Aewyn said.

“What does the queen think about that?”

“Mother wants you there, too.”

Otter didn’t say anything to that, only looked unhappy.

“Papa says it will be a good thing if you come. People will know you’re my brother. You’ll be welcome. You will. You’re to walk in with us and sit with us, and the people will see who you are.”

A small silence. “I don’t know why.”

“Because you are my brother.”

“I’m not, quite. It’s pretending.”

“It’s not,” Aewyn said fiercely. “You are my brother. You will be, in public, so everyone knows who you are, and that my father and my mother agree. I heard them talking about it, and my mother says it’s a good idea.”

“If His Majesty says so,” Otter said faintly. “I’ve never been to Quinalt services. What am I to do?”

“Oh, all you have to do is sit when we sit and stand when we stand and stay next to me and do just as I do. The choir sings and the Holy Father gives a sermon every day. We listen, and we get up and go home. The first day is Fast Day. That’s the worst. You have to dress in the dark every day. But we go without eating from dawn to dark on Fast Day, and it’s always breakfast before the sun comes up, because we have to be there at sunrise. But it’s just five days.” It was what his mother used to say to him to cheer him up. “And then the Bryalt holiday starts, midway through. My mother puts up decorations in her chambers when that starts. You could put them up, in yours, well, after Fast Day. You shouldn’t put them in the sitting room, though. We can’t do that.”

“The Quinalt doesn’t allow it?”

“No.” Aewyn lowered his voice, and confessed: “I like my mother’s holiday ever so much better, with the evergreen and candles. Especially the cakes. Do they make the sweet cakes in Amefel, the brown ones with the nuts?”

“Oh, nut cakes, yes. And braided bread with apples in it.” Otter’s eyes brightened. “Do you have that for holiday?”

“Well,” Aewyn admitted, “no one downstairs knows how. But Mother’s maid knows how to bake the cakes herself, and she goes down to the kitchen, and tosses Cook out, and we have them for days.” He saw how Otter’s eyes brightened at that news. “They pass the cakes out among all my mother’s staff, all through the Bryalt holiday, and she puts the evergreen up and lights bayberry candles in her private chambers at night, and they go to the Bryalt shrine on the last night, or at least Mother does, and her maids. My father can’t, and I can’t, not even when I was a babe in arms.” That was always a sore spot with him and with his mother. “She misses the dances. But they sing songs in her rooms. What else do they do in Amefel?”

“They give out the little cakes, free, in the shrine, except if you have coin in your purse you have to make an offering to keep all your other coins lucky. And there’s a penny baked into some of the cakes. The aetheling—the duke—throws pennies all up and down the street when he rides to.the front gate to open it for the year. I’ve picked up three, all told. They’re supposed to be lucky.” He pulled out the plain braided cord he wore about his neck, and showed three dull brown pennies, pierced through. Aewyn had seen it before, and wondered then if it was a charm.

“Is it magical?” he asked warily.

“Oh, it’s Gran’s; it could be. She made it for me, from the lucky pennies. Holiday pennies. It’s bad luck to spend them.”

“The Quinalt takes the money we give,” Aewyn said. “It doesn’t give it out. Everybody has to give something, The priests do give out food to the poor on the last day and set up long tables in the square. First day is the day I hate.”

“Fast Day?”

“That’s the hardest. Fasting daylight to dark. And praying at sunrise in the Quinaltine. We have to go there while it’s still dark, it’s always cold, because the sanctuary hasn’t heated up yet, and it’s long, long praying. You get tired, you mustn’t fidget, and you can’t eat or drink anything, not even water, on the day, from the first the sun rises. Even the horses and the cattle can’t eat or drink until the sun goes down.”

“But they don’t know what day it is!”

“Oh, truth is, they’ll feed themselves off browse. That’s why we put most of the horses we can down in pasture.”

“But it’s thick snow down there now. Will they put out hay?”

“They’re not supposed to, really. If the wind’s blowing, you’ll hear the cattle bawling clear up on the hill. Lamenting the sins of the world, the fathers say. And the horses that have to stay in stable, the courier horses and such, they’re pent in, and there’s no hay.”

Otter had been on his belly, leaning on his elbows before the fire. Now he had sat up. “That’s outright cruel, not to feed them.”

“Well”—Aewyn looked to see where his guards were, and lowered his voice—“the fact is, the grooms up on the hill always spill a lot of grain in empty stalls before the day, and leave buckets full of water, then let the horses across to the empty stalls where the grain is, that afternoon, for all the horses that have to be up on the hill. It is sort of a sin, if the priests had to rule on it, but nobody mentions it happens, so nobody ever complains. And I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager with all this snow that the stable-boys leave a gate open so the livestock down in pasture can get into a section where there’s a haystack. The priests say one thing, but the grooms always get around it because nobody wants the horses tearing up the fences.”

“That’s lying, isn’t it?”

Aewyn gave a second look toward the guards’ hallway. And back. “It’s not really lying. It’s just pretending. Pretending isn’t a sin.”

“It’s still lying. And starving the horses is a sin.”

“Well, you can’t say that to the priests. Nor even where the guards can hear you.”

“I can say it to you, though. Don’t you think it’s wrong?”

Sometimes Otter’s questions were worrisome. “I don’t know I ever thought about it. We’re not supposed to lie. Or be cruel. But my father says sometimes people have to, anyway, for good reasons. The horses not knocking the boards down would be a good, practical reason for sneaking the grain in, wouldn’t it? And we’re lying so we don’t have to be cruel. So I suppose that one cancels the other.”

“Well, what if we went down to the stable tomorrow and dropped a whole sack of apples?”

Sometimes Otter’s schemes were as troubling as his questions. But he also came up with intrigues Aewyn never would have thought of. “Us high folk daren’t get caught doing it. The priests would be very put out. But if we paid the grooms to go get a batch of nice big apples and carrots and such and strew it all through the stalls, nobody would care.”

It was a plot hatching, a plot that required all sorts of delicious connivance. Otter’s ways had never gotten them caught, particularly when he had Paisi’s advice. For a country lad, Otter was very good at figuring out the byways and back ways of the palace—besides their careful mapping. But this was something that, besides theft, required diplomacy, and arrangements, and picking the right people to carry it out, those who would keep a secret.

He knew just the ones.

And, he thought, if they were very clever, there was the big kitchen apple barrel, there were always old flour sacks in the kitchen, and if they sneaked quite skillfully, they needn’t spend a penny of his market money, or have to trust the stable lads to do the buying.

ii

A LITTLE PLAN, WITH AEWYN, ALWAYS ENDED UP FAR BIGGER THAN IT STARTED. Otter was not thoroughly happy: he would rather have put his hand in fire than have to attend Quinalt services, though he had to respect the king’s faith, and he could see that there were advantages to his mother’s son not sitting in his rooms while Guelenfolk were praying and fasting and being pious. But that inconvenience palled in the face of the adventure Aewyn proposed: he was very glad to think they would be feeding the horses—his own among them—and that Aewyn agreed with him. His own stomach was full of good food. He trusted his half brother Aewyn, who, despite his grand notions, never had led them wrong. And his father—in private, he dared think of the king as his father—had made provision for his going to the Quinalt Festival in public with the family. That was at once scary and exciting. He had not been in public with his brother before.

He walked back to his room, a track that led down the hall, across the landing of the great stairs, and farther down the hall four doors, just as the servants were putting out the east wing candles—all but the single candle in each hall sconce, which would burn for safety and for convenience of anyone whose night candle had gone out. The west wing, where Aewyn’s room lay next the king’s and the queen’s chambers, still burned bright with multiple candles, and the sounds of revelry still came up the stairs from the corridor below, where a veritable forest of candles burned bright and numerous. By comparison, with the dimming of the candles in the east wing, the way to his own door began to feel like deepest night, and the sleet rattling at the high windows of the grand stairway at the landing predicted the revelers below might wade knee deep to their lordly houses before morning.

It was a lonely hour, and he had no bodyguard to walk with him: his father had appointed him none, though the captain of his father’s guard had given him the name of the sergeant of the upper hall night guard and orders to go to him if he ever felt uneasy. Aewyn’s bodyguard, likewise, would have walked him home on such late visits, but he never availed himself of what Aewyn had ceased to offer—he could not imagine Guelen guardsmen, the Prince’s Guard more to the point, armored and carrying weapons, walking him down the hall to his room. He had no enemies that he knew, nor any great notoriety, so far as he knew; there were no bogles on the short way, only disconcerting echoes and a fluttering activity of shadows in the dim light, all of which were due to drafts—there was a well-reported and much-deplored draft in the upper hall when certain doors downstairs were open, but he had no idea which ones those were. He was reasonably sure the shadows were the wind fluttering the last candles, and nothing due to haunts—the Guelesfort had nothing of the reputation of the Zeide, down in Amefel.

He was a guest in his father’s house and had no desire to disturb the household, or make demands, or take his welcome for granted. He was Otter, was all, on a visit that would last only as long as he amused his brother, and he would go back to Amefel, probably before too much longer—as soon as he had assured his father he was a quiet soul and without great expectations. He had used to dream of being swept up by his royal father on one of his visits and made a prince, well, at least a landed lord—had not his father provided him an education, and put him under the personal care of Lord Crissand?—but a surer knowledge of the world beyond Gran’s farm had begun to tell him that was not at all likely, and that the reason he was under Lord Crissand’s care had more to do with Lord Crissand’s having his mother in prison.

Going to Festival with the family, now: that was a surprise to him. He had not been sure he would be this long in Guelemara.

He found his own door and whisked inside as if ghosts were on his heels—always, these snug, painted doors chased a little breeze inside, and the doors, easy on their polished hinges, felt snappish and scarily sharp in their closing, fierce things that would love a taste of peasant skin.

“M’lord?” Paisi was waiting up for him—Paisi, Gran’s true grandson, as happened, Gran’s proper heir, a grown man—while he himself was Gran’s ward, a guest even under the roof he called home. Paisi had never settled easily into what he called “lordly doin’s,” and avoided locals—so it was a lonely watch Paisi had assumed, and not uncommon for Otter to find Paisi sitting exactly this way at the fireside, having had his supper alone. It was not to his will that Paisi regularly stayed behind in quarters when he was with Aewyn, but that was what Paisi chose. Paisi oversaw the servants who made free of every door in the Guelesfort—“so’s to see what fancy servants do,” was Paisi’s way of putting it, in his choice to stay much about their rooms. But Paisi, who had been a thief when he was a boy, had his own suspicions of anyone opening drawers—even with the best of excuses and bearing clean linens when they did it.

Paisi was a small wiry man with dark hair and dark eyes, like most Amefin-born—clean-shaven, like most from the west and north. His hands were callused and his face was tanned dark from work in the sun. The habit of good humor was etched around his eyes, lines which the fire smoothed to a look of youth. Country-bred might be an insult in this grand house; but that was Paisi, through and through; and wherever Paisi was, was safe and comfortable, in Otter’s thinking, a little bit of Gran’s house that stayed constantly near him in this strange place.

Paisi rose as Otter unfastened his cloak, and Paisi took it from him, snatching it deftly away, though Otter perfectly well knew for himself where the peg was. Paisi hung his cloak up by the guards’ room, just off the little entry hall, and Otter, ignoring both hearthside chairs, sank down on the warm, smooth, polished stones: nothing escaped the relentless polishing in the Guelesfort.

Paisi sat down by him, cross-legged, picked up the poker, and began to settle the fire down for the night.

“Did you have supper?” Otter asked him, to be sure the servants had come and done their jobs. He was prepared to go down and raid the kitchen with Paisi, well fed as he was: Aewyn’s supper invitation had been unexpected. “I didn’t think I’d be so long.”

“Oh, when ’Is ’Ighness called ye in to supper, I went straight down to kitchen on me own, bein’ a canny fellow.”

A frown. “You’re entitled to call the servants to bring it, you know.”

“Oh, but ’Is Majesty’s banquet’s all spread out down below, and staff gettin’ all the dishes that come back, ain’t they? So the pickin’s is better if I go down meself—I ain’t lived in a great house for nothin’. I’d ha’ brought some tarts up when I come back, but didn’t seem likely there was short commons in ’Is ’Ighness’s rooms, neither, was there?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” Otter said, which was the truth—though he and Aewyn had, regrettably, seen no tarts at all: he was a little envious, for the tarts. “We laid plots to feed the horses.”

“For Fast Day, was ye meanin’?”’

“Aewyn told me about it. Paisi, we intend to steal a sack of apples from the kitchen.”

“Now, ye ain’t pilferin’ any apples, lad. If you’re bent on annoyin’ the priests, leave pilferage to one who knows how to slip about.”

“I think His Highness insists to do it himself.”

“An’ the kitchen barrel is in the storeroom, an’ there’s a lock on all. You got to get down there after supper, is what, if you’re going to get in. And then you got to know when the baker’ll be in, and ’e’ll be in and out of that room in the night, to start the dough for mornin’ bakin’. I know when.”

“You could get in trouble.”

“I might if I was caught. Which I won’t be.” Paisi wriggled his fingers, a ripple in the firelight. “An’ who’s sayin’ this is a good idea, now?”

“His Highness says they always do it. Well, the grooms always do it, spread grain here and there so the horses don’t go hungry. We just thought apples would be good for holiday.”

“So how many sacks is this to be? There’s twenty-some horses up ’ere.”

“I don’t know. At least a good big one. His Highness says there are always flour sacks in the kitchens.”

“Oh, so this is a proper plan, is it, wi’ sacks an’ all. An’ ye’ll be tellin’ the stableboy what, when ye come in with these ’ere sacks?”

“See, you should have come with me.”

“Well, I didn’t know ye’d be plottin’ theft and knavery with ’Is ’Ighness. Filch ye a couple coin, that I can do, an’ we got a few o’ Gran’s, which is far easier, then I go down an’ get your sack of apples in town, none the wiser, wi’out stirrin’ up the whole hill an’ gettin’ the Prince in trouble. You just let me tend to it.”

“No! Coin’s not apples. You can get in so much trouble…”

“Apples an’ coin is the same to the law, an’ coin o’ th’ realm’s a sight lighter an’ easier to hide. If you’re goin’ to thieve, lad, ye got to be light. Besides, if ye bribe the stableboy, ’e won’t remember a thing when they find the flour sack.”

“Well, you’d have to get the whole sack of apples up past the Guelesfort gate. That’s where you’d get caught.”

“Wi’ what? A sack of apples I paid for wi’ good coin? I’m bringin’ it upstairs t’ m’lord.”

“For Fast Day?”

“Ah, that is a point.”

“And neither you nor I has money. We shouldn’t spend Gran’s.”

“An’ Gran’ll skin us both for fools for good an’ all for even thinkin’ it, an’ me for lettin’ ye risk your neck! Whoever come up wi’ this wild notion in the first place?”

“Maybe I did,” Otter admitted. “I don’t know.”

“Well, how can ye not know?”

“It was mostly both of us. Prince Aewyn said they don’t feed the horses on Fast Day, or well, they do, but they don’t, and he said they scatter grain around and let them into the stalls where it is. But it just seemed right to give them a real treat. We already have coin. Or Prince Aewyn does. He gets pennies for market day. We could just tell the grooms to go buy apples because they’re the ones to do it.”

Paisi made a rude face, not letting him get further. “An’ who knows if the grooms takes ’alf your coin an’ spends it in the tavern, neither? I don’t trust them lads, especially not that shifty fellow who’s the stablemaster’s get. Ye give ’im a bribe, so’s he knows it’s his, an’ ’e don’t have to get all stirred up and sweaty to pilfer it, so’s he can lie wi’ a pure, clear face when authority comes askin’.”

He was sure that, where it regarded thievery, Paisi was the one to ask. He and Paisi had shared little mischiefs at home in Amefel, minor misdeeds, like filching windfall apples during harvest from an unwatched orchard, and Paisi had taught him how to lie low and cover his tracks. But here, Paisi was right, it was priests, and law, and very skilled guards stalking up and down the halls; and whether it was because they were in the strange and Guelen west, or because it was priests lying about being cruel and calling it good deeds, he had no idea of the ground he stood on in Guelenish lands. He had come to the Guelesfort, it had turned out, because Prince Aewyn wanted him to come and not because, as he had always hoped would happen, his father had had the idea. So he was not the king’s guest. He was here on Aewyn’s whim, and they liked each other, but it was a question how far Aewyn would stand up for him if something went wrong. Here in the Guelesfort the penalty wasn’t just paying extra chores to Gran and delivering simples to the offended orchard owner. It was the priests, the law, and the Guelen Guard, and Paisi, who wasn’t the king’s son, and had no protection, wanted to get between him and the law.

“I just felt badly about my horse,” he said, the only moral sense he could come up with. “He loves his grain. Gran wouldn’t hold with these priests, would she?”

“Nor would she hold wi’ you stealin’,” Paisi said. “Gran’d box my ears for lettin’ you find your way into mischief, here in the king’s own house, an’ the Prince with ye, good gods! Ye’re here to find your fortune wi’ your father, is what.”

“I’m not, really. It wasn’t my father who wanted me here.”

“Well, same as. An’ finding your fortune ain’t likely if the guards catch you an’ the Prince filchin’ apples.”

“So what’s right? The Prince won’t like it if I back off now. And Aewyn wouldn’t get into trouble if he was caught. I know it’s right what you say about the kitchen, and the locks, and all, but he won’t get caught. They won’t dare catch him, the same as they pretend to starve the horses, won’t they?”

“Let me tell you about priests an’ morality, little brother. They’re apt to be more upset if them apples is in the Prince’s hands after sunrise, because he’s the prince, havin’ food when he ain’t supposed to, never mind it’s horse-feed. Stealin’, that’s not the matter. The food is. That’s priests for you.”

“But—”

“You hear me, you hear me on this, lad. There was a time the pious priests—they was Bryalt ones, in this case—was preaching in the square about charity, an’ the holiday penny, and feedin’ the poor, an’ all. An’ we was starvin’, Gran and me, an’ it sounded like a miracle. We was desperate. I was, oh, about nine. An’ hearin’ that about charity, an’ believin’ what I heard, I went to the shrine to get the ’oliday gift they promised. And do you know, them rascal priests wouldn’t give me the penny for a loaf o’ bread, because I wasn’t goin’ to swear again’ wizards, when the whole reason we was starvin’ was that Gran couldn’t sell her cures on account of the town marshal put out some damned edict about wizards an’ charms? That was when Heryn was duke in Amefel, and there was laws again’ most things, from wall to wall o’ the town, an’ a tax on ever’thing that moved, an’ there was two thieves ’angin’ at the gate that very day. Well, I was mad. An’ it didn’t fright me none. That was the first time I stole, right from the offerin’ plate. Weren’t the last, neither. I were a damn good thief before all was done. An’ I went on bein’ a good thief. I got back at the cheats as deserved it, and got paid for havin’ a sharp eye by the same guards as would ha’ hanged me if they’d caught me at thievin’. Oh, I was clever. Well, till I met Lord Tristen, I was.”

“Tell that time,” Otter said, snugging down against his arms, down on the warm hearthstones, full as he was and close to bedtime. They were far from the matter of Aewyn and the apples now, and a tale, one he’d heard a hundred times, was much better at settling the day’s worry than thinking about Festival and apple theft, which he hoped would just work itself out without involving Paisi at all. “Tell it, about how you met Lord Tristen.”

“Well,” Paisi said, gathering his knees into his arms, as they’d sat many a cold night on the rough masonwork of Gran’s fireside. One could all but see the flash of Gran’s spindle spinning beside them. “Well, it was like this. I was on the street, me a little younger ’n you, now—” That one detail had changed slowly over the years he had heard the tale. “And I see this young man walkin’ along, looking lost, ’im wi’ the look of a noble, but all dirty an’ lookin’ as if ’e’d slept rough. Now here’s a young lord a little drunk an’ lookin’ for ’is next tavern, says I to meself, an’ maybe havin’ money left on ’is person, an’ maybe I can find that purse. So I goes up to him, and ’e asks me if ’e can stay the night in my room, bein’ kind of odd-spoke when he does it. Well, now, I hadn’t any room, bein’ as Gran an’ I was livin’ in sheds and such as we could find ’em, up an’ down the town. I says, well, a gentleman like you c’n stay up to the Zeide, can’t ye? An’ he wants to know where that is. Well, now, any fool, even a drunk fool, knows the way to the Zeide hill, which is plainly uphill all over town, from the walls up, an’ at first I’d the notion to laugh at ’im, but ’e just looked at me in that way he had. So, says I, I’d guide him, says I, figurin’ there’d be coin somewheres—’e ’ad no purse about ’im, such as I’d been able to see first off, but some hides it, an’ the gate-guards up there, they’d pay ’andsome, if so happen this was some lord’s son in trouble, an’ more ’n that if so happen this odd young man were some outland spy—the Elwynim was keen on doin’ in your da in those days, an’ now an’ again they tried. It wasn’t just thieves they had hangin’ at the town gate when your da was there. So I showed me visitor up to the gate, an’ the guards took ’im in an’ give me a penny for ’t. But it were that look ’e had, them gray, gray eyes as could look right through you, gentle as could be—I didn’t like what I’d done, an’ I thought an’ thought about it. But if ye ever get involved with ’is kind, ye never can untangle the threads, can ye? An’ ’e fell in with your da. So came the day I’d got meself in trouble, an’ ’e remembered, and ’e asked me to be ’is servant, which I was. And ’e give me ever’thing I needed, and enough for Gran a room, too, never a question, never asked what I did wi’ the last coin. ’Is hands could heal, they could, and ’e cured Gran, too, didn’t he, just easy as thinkin’?”

Gran always nodded at this point in the story, so in Gran’s absence, he did, which went unnoticed. Paisi’s eyes were shut, remembering.

“And I was a servant to Master Emuin, after, which was the same, almost, as to him. And sometimes I slipped in me manners, but Lord Tristen, ’e forgive me, an’ ’e spoke for me. And after ’e forgive me, I felt different, at least about stealing from honest craftsfolk. Not about stealing from the priests, who was always talkin’ charity and who always ate well enough and had a roof over their own heads—them I never got on with; but I didn’t steal again, so’s when Lord Tristen left the town, and after Master Emuin left, I went to the Bryaltines an’ gave three good Amefin pennies at the shrine, to have it all paid, every penny I could ever remember stealing from the priests in the lean years. Lord Crissand set me and Gran up in the country—with you. With an Otter to bring up.”

Here Paisi always came alive and gave a playful dig at Otter’s ribs. He did it now, and Otter tumbled over and laughed as he always had, so that for a moment a fine lordly fireside in the Guelesfort had the feel of a little Amefin farmhouse with its rough stone fireplace, and winter fire after winter fire, before this one.

“Which the Bryalt seems all right with,” Paisi added, aside from his story, resuming his place on the hearthstones as Otter rolled back onto his elbows. “I ain’t never feared curses from the Bryaltine since I paid them coins. I’d come in there while you was studyin’ letters an’ never feared no curse. And now you got them lucky pennies round your own neck, the same number as I gave back. It’s spooky, is what it is.”

Paisi hadn’t always added that bit. But it was true, and he knew it. Otter touched the coins, which dangled free about his neck, and thought of Gran, and wondered what spell she had put on them.

“I’m going to miss the Bryalt festival, being here this long,” Otter said quietly. “They don’t dance.” And then he added, remembering: “They want me to attend services here, with the Prince. Were there clothes sent for me?”

“Oh, damn,” Paisi muttered, and leapt up.

“What?” Otter asked, bewildered by this change of countenance.

“I was to tell ye. ’Is Majesty’s man was ’ere hours ago, and servants, and they left all sorts of things, which ye—ye must see, m’lord.”

“I’m not ‘m’lord,’ here,” Otter murmured, which he had protested a hundred times by now, but he gathered himself to his feet as Paisi asked. The king had bestowed all manner of gifts on him, as was: he could by no means think what Paisi could so disapprove, but he rose, following a suddenly worried Paisi to the clothespress.

“Here ’t is,” Paisi declared, opening the door and drawing out a bright red cloak of fine cloth.

And besides the fine cloak, there was a quilted red coat, with the gold Dragon quartered in a black shield, the beast worked in close stitches, with a marvelous bright eye picked out in real gold—an eye that pierced right through him and made him ask whether this could possibly be a tailor’s mistake. It was not all the Marhanen device, quartered like that; but it was an appearance of that royal emblem, every bit a prince’s coat in the quality of it: quartered like that, it meant kinship with the Marhanen, at very least, but the black—he had no right to Crissand’s blue and gold, certainly. The black and a darker red were the provincial colors of Amefel. But he certainly had no right to those, either: Duke Crissand had heirs, and the king would not disinherit them.

Paisi, sober of countenance and surely knowing as well as he did that this gift of device and colors marked some turn in their fortunes, mutely showed him the hose and boots that went with it.

“Which I got to think ’Is Majesty surely knows what’s what and where’s where,” Paisi said, still with a worried look, “as ’Is Majesty’s man give me the livery to match, an’ I said somebody made some mistake, an’ ’e said no, it were no mistake.” Paisi showed it, too, bright red, a plainer, twill-woven cloth, but very fine, with never a slub to be seen, and new black boots. Paisi’s holiday coat had the same Dragon in a shield worked smaller, in leather cut-work, with stitches for the eye, and sewn on.

“Summat like the Guard, the shield, summat like, but this ain’t the same, is it? The servants said ’t was for the Fast Day,” Paisi rattled on, “an’ it was the king’s man who said it, an’ ’e ’ad to know it’s proper, didn’t ’e? It’s as if ’e’s goin’ to give ye a title. Feel the boots, there, that ’e give ye. Ain’t they splendid?”

They were, indeed, the finest leather imaginable, soft and sturdy at once, not the sort of thing ever to scuff up in the practice-yard or wear on the road, beyond any question—not the sort of thing either of Gran’s lads had ever worn, not even in the palace of Guelemara.

“Marhanen colors, m’lord! It is, which ever’body is going to remark, seein’ it.”

The colors of the king, with a passing acknowledgment of Amefel, no acknowledgment at all of his bastardy or the banned Aswydds—the cloth whispered past his fingers with a darker thought, that the only colors he was actually entitled to were those of another dragon, green and gold: his mother’s colors. And those were death to wear: all perquisites, including the duchy and the colors, had been stripped from the Aswydds by the king’s decree. The priests had told him, most particularly, those perquisites and grants Lord Crissand held, and those to which a bastard, even a Marhanen bastard, would not even appear to aspire, in any degree. He must never, for specific instance, wear any species of red, not dark like the Amefin or bright like the Marhanen, nor any appearance of the Aswydds’ personal green and gold, or Lord Crissand’s blue. And here he held the Marhanen device in his hands, no matter what his mother might think of his wearing it—and there was no one at this hour to ask what it meant.

“Tomorrow,” he said to Paisi. “Tomorrow, before we get into any other sort of trouble, I have to run down the hall and ask Aewyn what His Majesty intends.”

“I was afraid to ask twice, me,” Paisi said in a low voice. “I thought I should, an’ then when I didn’t get a proper answer, I thought I shouldn’t, the king’s men bein’ so sure an’ so quick, an’ it coming straight from the king. I ain’t sure, m’lord, I ain’t at all sure. But ’Is Majesty clearly means what ’e gives. Ye’re to go to Festival in the king’s company, the king’s man says. And what else is there? ’E certainly can’t fit ye out in the Aswydd colors, what ye own by right. Can ’e?”

“No,” he said. “Don’t ever say it, Paisi. And we should never count on this. It’s very likely a mistake.”

“I’m sure your royal father knows what ’e’s about.”

“I’m not sure his tailor does.”

“But I’m sure ’Is Majesty’s man does, m’lord.”

“And livery!” He was unhappy with that assumption. “You’re not my servant, Paisi. You’re my brother. My uncle, if anything.”

“Well, servant is right enough, by me, and what ’m I ever to wear in me life as fine as this?” Paisi held up the twill coat, admiring it before he hung it back in the clothespress. “What the man said, the king’s man, was that these here is for the first day, Fast Day, and then there’ll be others come, day by day, but the tailor’s workin’ daylight an’ candlelight to be done, as is, on short notice. You’ll have a wardrobe t’ be proud as a prince.”

“And as like the tailor’s made a mistake. A terrible mistake.” He surrendered the fine coat to the clothespress, which Paisi hung for him, with the cloak, and set the boots down in the bottom of it.

“No, now, don’t ye fret about it,” Paisi said. “Ye’ll have tomorrow to ask. An’ if there’s aught wrong, it’s the tailor’s fault, ye’ve easy access to the Prince, an’ he’ll get his father’s ear. None’ll blame ye. Ye just be proper. Proper as ye can. Ye do ever’thing right, ye walk by the king, an’ all, an’ ye just do the rituals, never mind ye don’t have to agree in ’em.”

“Quinalt.” He was afraid of the Quinaltine, which loomed so large beside the Guelesfort. That priesthood had sent out decrees to trouble the lives of Amefin folk and Bryaltines and most of all wizard-kind, which was Gran, and him, as well as his wicked mother, all his life.

“Well, ye got to do some things different than ’oliday at home. These Quinaltines, mark ye, tomorrow they’ll just stuff themselves wi’ breakfast before the sun comes up, and again after the sun goes down, same as the grooms goin’ about to feed the horses. They don’t ever starve. It’s all show. It’s a lot of prayin’, an’ fine talk. An’ bluster.”

“It’s lies!”

Paisi’s face shadowed the second time with a look Otter could read as plain as words. “Don’t ye say that! Don’t ye ever say that except to me.”

“I’m no fool, Paisi.”

“Well, but ye’re honest, which can be right dangerous, ’specially if ye’re come at by surprise. Which I got to tell ye.”

“About what?”

“That there’s words in the Quinalt service that ye may have to hear an’ keep quiet, an’ ye’re not to look up when they say ’em or ask about ’em after.”

“How, words?”

“They curse the Bryalts. Now, mind, they may not do it nowadays. They used to do it in Amefel, till m’lord Crissand said otherwise, an’ then they don’t do it no more there, as I’ve heard. But this bein’ Guelessar, and the Quinaltine itself, I ain’t sayin’ they don’t, still, especially at Festival. It’s in the singin’. They used to say over an’ over, Death to them as is under the Star—which means the Sihhë; an’, Death to them as drinks the cup—which is the cup the Bryalts drink at ’oliday sunset. It’s about the old wars, an’ the king. An’ it’s just words.”

“Gran says nothing is just words if you have any sense. Why do they do that?”

“Well, the Quinalt ’olds it’s different gods we drink the cup to, and in their heads it’s witchcraft. An’ the Bryaltine in Henas’amef has a shrine they don’t talk about, which they don’t like. An’ ye know the Quinalt don’t ’old with wizards. Even the Bryalts is a little put off by ’t, except old Master Emuin used to come an’ go there, bein’ Teranthine, which is no different than bein’ a wizard.”

Gran was a witch, and Bryalt, and the Bryalt priests never had complained about his manners in services in town, except to show him how to make a proper blessing sign and not to do it Gran’s way.

“The Bryalt priests don’t mind a charm or two,” Paisi said. “But the Quinalts, you know they’re strong again’ the Sihhë.” Paisi had closed the clothes-press. Now he settled on the end of the bed. “And sure enough, the first Festival after Lord Tristen went west, the Quinaltines started doin’ the old hymns again, all upset, puttin’ things back in what they hadn’t done all the years. So ’e’s gone, an’ here they are, an’ the Bryalts bein’ foremost in Henas’amef—still, the Quinalt there got ambitious an’ was goin’ to put the words back, so the Bryalts said. So I went to the Quinalt service meself, an’ heard it plain as plain. The Star is his banner, ye recall.”

Lord Tristen’s banner, that was, the old Sihhë banner.

“So they were cursing him.”

“No question at all that was what they was about. I ’eard it plain, just the way the fathers said it would happen, an’ I was upset. And old Father Haidur—you don’t remember him: he died when you was scarcely up to me elbow—but ’e was Lord Abbot in the Bryalt shrine, then, and he went right to Market Square an’ raised a famous fuss in town, tellin’ ever’body what the Quinalts was sayin’. After that, a couple of Quinalt priests got soaked in ale an’ tossed in a manure pile. So the Quinalt Patriarch went to Lord Crissand all hot and steamin’ about the disrespect, and Lord Crissand had hot words back with the Patriarch about them doin’ the hymn about Lord Tristen again, and the upshot was they stopped singin’ that hymn the next services, an’ ever’ year after. Far as I know, they still don’t do it. But here’s the Quinaltine, an’ ye just got to expect ’em to be Quinalt.”

Be on your guard, that was to say, in a place where the walls echoed to listening servants, and even the report of a dour look raced off to places there was no accounting. There’s spies, Paisi had said before they ever rode inside the walls of Guelemara, or up its cobbled streets. There’s spies in every hall up there. Look ’appy no matter what, an’ don’t fight. Don’t ye never let anybody provoke ye, boy.

“Well, well,” Paisi said in the stillness, “the king is lookin’ out for you, he’s goin’ to bring ye out in front o’ ever’body, an’ granted them colors is what ye’re to wear, he ain’t goin’ half measures. But there’s those here that don’t like the Amefin, and sometimes they say so, and act so, an’ puttin’ on a red coat is only goin’ to turn them heads your way—not too many of that mind, maybe, but ye don’t want to do nothin’ to make folk uneasy. Ye don’t get to Iaughin’ wi’ the Prince an’ ever forget it’s a solemn place, or let yourself frown when ye shouldn’t, so’s somebody can be whisperin’ about it after an’ sayin’ ye was talkin’ again’ the Quinalt or that ye wasn’t grateful t’ be there. Otters is slippery, but they shouldn’t ever, never get too confident.”

Otter nodded solemnly, with a colder and colder feeling coiling inside, after the first blush of pride at being invited with the family, then the unsettling matter of the red coat. Priests always made him anxious, even Bryalt ones, and he never had had dealings at all with the Quinalt sort before— Quinaltines were few in number in Henas’amef, sullen and aloof from most of the poorer sort of townsman and holding their services in a mostly empty sanctuary, for a handful of clerks, mostly travelers from Guelessar. In Guelemara, in the capital, the Quinaltines were foremost, and ruled everything, while it was the Bryaltines who kept one solitary shrine: it stood near the great Quinaltine, so far as he knew, while everyone important would go to Quinalt services. Even the queen, who was Bryalt herself, went to Quinalt services, even if she went to the Bryalt shrine later.

And by what her son had just hinted was the case, even the queen of Ylesuin daren’t put up holiday lights outside her own rooms, or hold holiday dancing or pass out festive cakes outside her own chambers, for fear of what Quinalt priests would say. There were bloody wars in the history of the Bryaltines and Quinaltines. There were riots, and murders. His father was king, but apparently even the queen didn’t dare do what she wanted, or speak her mind; nor could Aewyn, so that should warn him.

It appeared a grim sort of holiday, already. And the clothes by no means comforted him. The supper he’d had with Aewyn, so blithe and happy with naive plans an hour ago, sat uneasily on his stomach. But he was well sure that Paisi, who had spent his time in Lord Crissand’s halls, and in Lord Tristen’s service, was a clever man and generally good at finding out things, and very quick to warn him about things that could go wrong. The matter of the king’s gift had Paisi baffled, that much was clear: Paisi was warning him to walk carefully, and Paisi had found no way to ask deeper into the matter without, as Paisi might put it, starting every hare in the hedge.

He had to do the next asking, was what. Aewyn would likely sleep until noon—it was not at all uncommon. But Aewyn, when he did wake tomorrow, was the best person to ask—Paisi was right: he could get to Aewyn, easy as that, and if Aewyn himself said wear the clothes and ask no questions, well, then that was the Prince’s order, wasn’t it, and as high as he could reasonably reach.

So that was the wisest thing to do. He made up his mind to it. And he looked sidelong at Paisi, putting complete confidence into his voice. “I have no great worry about it. Aewyn will solve it when he gets up. And if it’s wrong—I can trust him to smooth things over.”

“He brung ye here. Ye ain’t fallen out, ha’ ye? He’s agreein’ t’ ye bein’ wi’ the family.”

“Oh, he’s happy about it. He says—he says we only have to get through Festival, then we’ll take the horses afield and ride out to a hunting lodge he may have someday. He showed me the maps. And while we’re there, it’ll be the Bryalt festival, well, at least the last of it, and he says we can put up evergreen and candles. It’s five days. Just five days, and we can go.”

Paisi gave a deep sigh, as if that settled matters. “Well, if we ain’t neck deep in snow by then, which it’s lookin’ like out there, tonight.”

“We’ll go, all the same. We’ll camp in the lodge and cook for ourselves and not worry about whoever might be listening, because it won’t be anybody but you and Aewyn’s guard.”

“Oh, now, you be careful wi’ that notion there, lad. If there’s anybody reports to ’Is Majesty, it’s that lot.”

“Well, but we won’t do anything to deserve reporting, will we? We’ll just eat sausages and holiday cakes—I think I can make them, myself, fair enough, if we have the makings—and we’ll have a good time and wear plain clothes, and you won’t have to call me m’lord there, either, because there won’t be servants. I’ll just be Otter again.”

Paisi grinned. “Ain’t no difference where we sit, I’m bound to be your man, m’lord, until we’re back under Gran’s roof, an’ who knows? We’re still here, an’ things is goin’ right well for ye. If ye please your father an’ win them colors proper, maybe I’ll be your man after.”

“Never after, Paisi.”

“Now ye mind your words, there. You was born a king’s son, m’lord, ye was, no question, an’ if justice is done, an’ if ’e’s truly bent on sayin’ so in public, then, so—ye ain’t just Otter, ever again.”

“I’m not sure I want that, Paisi.”

“Of course you do. An’ how ’m I t’ stay with any king’s son except I’m a rare good servant? Which I was! I was Master Emuin’s helper, and Lord Tristen’s man, an’ it was Lord Tristen himself set me to watch you, wasn’t it? So I ain’t goin’ against his word, no, I ain’t. I’m stayin’ what I was told to be, ’cause I ain’t facin’ him to say no, no sir, I give up.”

It was a glum and sobering thought, never to be Otter again. But he was verging on a man’s estate, his voice already changed, and his upper lip needed just a touch of Paisi’s razor now and again—there was no hope yet of more.

“Watered wine,” Paisi said, sliding down off the bed. “There’s the proper cure for a troublin’ night and a howlin’ cold wind. Maybe wi’ just a little less water ’n usual, it bein’ late. What d’ ye say?”

“I’d drink it,” he said. And Paisi poured it, with only a little water, and they went back to the warmth of the hearthside and drank it, while Paisi heated coals in a bedwarmer, and took the pan to warm the sheets—there never was such a fine thing in Gran’s house, but then, Gran’s house was all one room, and the fireside never far, so their bed there never took such a chill as this one could, in its separate room. Paisi had a second cup, he added wine himself—which was very much hedging Gran’s strict instructions to keep the measure of water in the cup at two of water and one of wine—and they took themselves to bed.

To the same bed, there being ample room for both. It was the way they were accustomed to sleep at home in winter—all their lives were in that one room, the comfortable kitchen nook, their bed and Gran’s. No sleeping in the guards’ post for Paisi, though they mussed the bed there daily to make the servants think they had town manners, and laughed about it.

Tomorrow’s troubles for tomorrow, Gran would say, and Paisi very soon snored. Otter found the exact center of the warmed spot for his cold feet, in sheets otherwise smooth and fine as ice itself, and listened to the wind prying about the fine windows. No one stood guard over them, as bodyguards stood guard over the king and Prince Aewyn and every lord and lady under the Guelesfort roof. They themselves had no enemies except the general sort who fiercely deplored Amefin folk and Bryaltines, and none of those, Otter was sure, would care to risk the guards who stood watch over the Guelesfort. Or even raise their voices too much when he appeared with Aewyn.

So they slept, innocent, under the king’s roof.

iii

LATE TO BED, AND FAR TOO MUCH WINE, CEFWYN DECIDED, WHEN HE AND HIS queen, Ninévrisë, reached the sitting room. She had been more prudent at supper—but too long speech-making from the duke of Osenan and a tendency to moralize on the part of the Patriarch, on this eve of the holidays, had driven him to his old bad habits. He hoped no one had noticed.

And being far too heated from the desire to cut the Holy Father off short, he had smiled, and had a second dessert, which he regretted more than the wine.

“Tedious old man, the Holy Father,” he said to his queen, with a kiss on the cheek and a long embrace, which somehow alleviated the weariness. “I wish we were both in Elwynor. Or he was.”

“Oh, never afflict my kingdom with your priest,” Ninévrisë said, her hands slipping to his arms. Those wonderful eyes stared straight into his. “You tolerate him.”

“He’s an old, old man. There’s no mending him at this point. And the Crown needs no contests. Not now.”

“With this son of yours visiting, no, by no means.”

“Are you at ease with this? Are you truly at ease with him going to services?”

Those great eyes blinked, once, twice. And never wavered. “I held him when he was born. He had no choice in mothers. Of pity for her, however—I have little.”

“I have none at all. Nor would ever, ever offend you in bringing him to Festival. He could have gone home. He still might. Be sure. Be sure, now. Later—would be very hard.”

“I held him, I say. He looked like any baby.”

“The gods know what he is. He’s quick. He’s clever.”

“He’s Otter. And he could go on being Otter, if you sent him back… but that would be hard, now. What you do—what you do, be ever so sure of. For my own part—”

“What, for your part?” He had yearned for Ninévrisë’s true opinion on the matter of this son of his—and never felt he had it.

“He’s respectful, and modest. A good Bryalt lad.”

“If only he were only that.”

“Whatever he is, he makes our son laugh.”

“I have greatest reliance on the old woman. I believe her. But what I risk by believing this much in her—”

“It’s Tristen you believe in,” Ninévrisë said. “Isn’t it, after all? And Tristen said you should spare that woman, and he said you should take care of this boy. Me, he never advised in that regard… so I think my part is simply to watch you both and be on my guard. And I find he has a good face.”

“His mother’s eyes.”

“Oh, no such thing. They’re gray. Sihhë gray.”

“That didn’t come from my house.”

“That may be. But he has none of her wicked ways. Not a lie, not a prank—”

“Except our own son instigated them.”

Ninévrisë laughed the laugh that could cure his darkest mood and laid her head against his shoulder. “Daily,” she said, and looked up. “Wit and grace, both. Have you noticed? Aewyn has taken to books, under his influence.”

“More than his tutors ever managed. The last, I hear, went into cloister.”

“A good place for him.” Ninévrisë cast herself down in the chair by the fire, looking up at him. “He was dull and far too full of catechism. And the one before that was ambitious.”

“Ambitious, do you say?”

“Trust my word. Ambitious. I never liked him. Now he eels his way into the Patriarch’s service. He may be a good clerk, but what he writes I would never trust.”

“Efanor is too clever for him.”

“So was Aewyn.”

“That I have always maintained.” Cefwyn sank into the other chair, with the warmth of the fire instant on his outstretched feet as he folded his hands across his middle. “Otter. Elfwyn, as he is and will be—what would you think, Nevris, were I to send him to Elwynor to study?”

Brows lifted. “Take him from the old woman and our son?”

“A difficulty. An admitted difficulty. But he’s at that age. He has to find his way in the world. And he could rise in scholarly ranks, he well could. He has the wit, he has the skill, and he has the discretion to be very valuable to our son someday. Or to our daughter.”

Ninévrisë frowned, thinking on it—before a distant baby’s cry rose above the crackling of the fire. Aemaryen had waked. The nurse was with the baby, in the next room. But Ninévrisë rose from her chair to open the door and bade the nurse bring in the little princess—a red-faced and angry little bundle, who wanted her mother and generally got her way in the world.

Ninévrisë took the baby, and Cefwyn got up to touch the little face, which frowned at the light and squinted up at him—not half a year old, and already with her own notions of royal prerogatives. She was Elwynor’s longed-for heir. He would lose her entirely to Elwynor when she gained her majority, and she would spend more and more time in that land as she grew. Already he mourned that future, but it was for the peace, and for the future of both his children… all his children.

The tiny princess collected a kiss from her father and screwed up her face in protest, wanting less light and her mother’s attention.

“He might certainly go to Elwynor,” Ninévrisë said, finishing their former conversation. “With my blessing.” She offered a bent finger to the baby’s furious grasp. Pink, tiny fingers turned white, holding tight. “Hush, hush, Maryen. There’s a dear.”

Aemaryen shrieked.

“The Marhanen temper,” her father said ruefully.

“And Syrillas stubbornness in one,” Ninévrisë said, hugging the baby against her shoulder, which produced no diminution of the cries. “La, Saleyn, open the door.”

Conversation was over. Ninévrisë carried the Princess away, diminishing into quiet, and Saleyn shut the door, restoring peace, at least in the king’s chambers.

He missed the quiet evenings. He looked forward to the time, however brief, when the little princess would be up and about, eyes shining, finding wonder in everything new—he had had fifteen, now sixteen years between children, and Aemaryen their second and likely last, born when Aewyn was about to be a man. Everything they had learned with Aewyn they attempted with Aemaryen, and nothing quite applied. Aewyn had been so deceptively placid, well, until his young feet hit the ground, and this one—this one had come into the world demanding her way.

Perhaps she would become sweet-tempered once she could walk and do things with her own hands. Perhaps she would be the model of her mother, and that anger would be only at what she could not yet do.

Did it ever apply? he wondered. Were ever two infants quite the same?

This one would never, he feared, be a complacent child—this babe destined to be Regent in Elwynor, as her brother would be king over Ylesuin… and when this child reigned, Ylesuin might well award her the title of queen, the first ruler in her own name since the Sihhë kings. The peace he and Ninévrisë had tried to make would be all at risk in the generations to come, and everything rested on these two children and their affection for each other.

He hoped for reason. He hoped for a generation, in his two legitimate children, to knit their two kingdoms closer, so that there would never again be war between Quinalt and Bryalt, between eastern, fair-haired Guelenish folk, and the stubborn remnants of the Sihhë reign over the west.

And maybe, in this illegitimate son of his, this son whom Lord Tristen had advised him to hold easily in reach and treat generously—there was some unguessed key to the matter. If the boy they called Otter did make a good scholar, he might become an advisor, traveling between Elwynor and Ylesuin, to counsel both a queen of Elwynor and a king of Ylesuin how to make that peace.

Maybe, with that honest goodwill of his, Otter who was Elfwyn, that unlucky name, would gain the trust of both kingdoms, or at least learn to walk the sword’s edge of policy and politics. Tristen’s advice always ran deeper than seemed. It came of seeing connections most eyes never saw, Seeing into things yet to come.

Am I right? Am I being a wise king at the moment, old friend?

Will my daughter be the queen we hope for?

What next, for my two sons?

Gods, that they be, none of them, like me…

He had had his misspent youth, out of which Elfwyn had come. He had been, himself, no great scholar, only adequate for a young gentleman. He knew his ciphers only because the Quinalt father in charge of his earliest education reported regularly to the king his father, Ináreddrin. Ináreddrin, a true Marhanen, had had his own temper—and his son had had his own to counter it. A king, being king, could have his son confined to his room if his son did not get a better report on his math—

And he had escaped out the scullery doors, gotten caught, and beaten. And did it twice and three times more, finally enlisting his brother in his schemes and driving off his tutor in as elaborate and long-fought a series of maneuvers as he had ever contrived.

Then his father had found Master Emuin for his two sons’ betterment. Emuin, a gray-robed Teranthine priest, had let him get by with nothing and had his own ways of getting a prince to pay attention to his books. Cefwyn, having found someone who listened when he asked that question that doomed him with other tutors, that deadly dangerous word, why?—and equally perilous, why not?—had launched off into old records and acquired a habit of citing them whenever he was angry at priests or nobles.

Contrarily, his father had then decided his elder son was too studious by far, that he had all the bookwork a Marhanen prince could possibly need. Ináreddrin had decided it was time for his heir to get the other half of a practical education, to learn not the theory, but the practice of the law, to understand not how bees made their hive, or what made the moon change her shape, or what the Quinalt practices had been before they limited the gods to five—but what the oaths were between the king and each province, and how to provision an army—he wanted his heir to have a practical understanding of how to keep his quartermasters from pilfering the stores, how to break a rebel or train a horse, how to read a map and, from his father’s example, how to hold an angry, unruly people in fealty—thank the gods, in those days, for his bodyguard, who had kept him alive, and for Emuin, who never left him, even when the lessons turned darker and more dangerous and less to his liking. _:

His younger brother, Efanor, however, had seen the storm clouds flashing with paternal lightning, and Efanor, having a religious bent, had become more religious before their father’s attention turned to him. For a few years Efanor had been insufferably righteous, estranged from sin, sinners, and his elder brother. The army, subsequently, had sent back an angry elder prince with the habit of command, with less patience, not more; and things had only gotten worse between him and his father. Efanor had, at the same time, made himself the dutiful, the proper son, favored by the priests and ultimately by both their father and certain lords, sycophants who had had their way with the law and their father. Their father had formed a desire that Efanor should succeed him, and sent his heir to Amefel, a province rife with Elwynim assassins, in hopes of losing an argumentative heir and gaining an excuse for war; but it was Ináreddrin who had died, instead, trusting the wrong men.

Now Ylesuin was under his rule, Efanor was his right hand, and he had gained Elwynor not by war but by treaty and marriage. He had the difficult south bound closely to the Amefin, and the rebel Amefin, who were nearer Elwynim than not, bound to him in fealty and friendship, in the person of Lord Crissand—it was all a web of fragile threads they had made.

But in order to keep it together after him, Aewyn had to follow him, as Aemaryen would follow her mother, neither of them having seen the realm take shape, and they would have to learn their own lessons, how to mollify both sets of priests and how to keep their outer borders safe without letting any provincial lord build up a private army or exercise private ambitions.

Most of all they had to have the wisdom to understand who was honest, who was paying his taxes fairly, and who was skimming a bit off, that old pitfall of human wickedness. Blindness to corruption, thinking that just a little convenient corruption would do no harm, had led his father to disaster.

History. History, ciphering, and enough catechism to keep the king-to-be from saying the wrong thing to the wrong priest… this much he had gotten a priest or two to teach his unwilling son, thus far.

But now—now, too, remembering what a watershed the education of princes had been between him and Efanor—at the same time as he settled his illegitimate son in some useful and scholarly endeavor, he could not ignore this sudden bloom of interest in books that Otter had raised in Aewyn, this raiding of the library. He must not let that bloom fade or be the one to kill it, by stealing Otter away too abruptly. He knew Aewyn’s temperament, he knew its angers and its schemes and the softer elements of it, the vulnerable heart Aewyn guarded so secretly, and he knew he had to steer that stubborn Marhanen will in the right way and get him to copy Otter’s virtues…

Virtues acquired in a much harder situation, with far fewer prospects than the dazzling horizon of a prince. He had to get both his boys to ask the right questions, the whys and why nots of the world, and to come up with answers his own generation had failed to find.

Emuin would be the ideal tutor, once Otter went… wherever Otter must eventually go, for his own sake, and for his own happiness, for a few years. Emuin would be ideal. But Emuin, alas, had passed from the world years ago, simply, quietly vanished, before Aewyn had a chance to benefit by that wisdom. Emuin had been, even among the religious, that excellent thing in a royal advisor—too slippery to raise controversy in what he taught, no matter he belonged to neither major sect, simultaneously turning out a cynic of a king and a devout and cannily religious man in his brother.

If he knew where to lay hands on a Teranthine father these days, he said to himself, he’d hire the man on sight, unexamined. But he had no such resource. The Teranthines had quietly disappeared from their monastery and left a vacant shrine in Amefel.

He sat alone in the chair in front of the fire, watched it devour the wood, and waited for a particular coal to fall—if Emuin were here, they could lay wagers on it, and the old man would cheat. He was sure Emuin had cheated in such bets, having a Sight he lacked.

Whomever he found now to teach his son, it must be someone he could bring here, because it was impossible to send Aewyn away to study, twice lonely, parted from Otter and settled somewhere, worse, where he could have no idea what the boy was learning—or doing.

Surely there must be, in all the kingdom, some reasonable learned man he could hire to keep the boy’s nose in the right books.

Let them go together to Elwynor? The Quinalt priests would howl… their Marhanen prince gone to learn from heretics.

There might be other disadvantages to that idea. Boys changed into men, and granted he could sunder them now by a decree, he was by no means sure yet what this stray son of his would become when he was a man.

Otter, now, the determined scholar—the Bryaltine fathers in Henas’amef had taught him his letters, but not Bryalt catechism: a royal order had settled that. And a royal request, once he understood the boy’s growing need, had had books sent down from Duke Crissand’s library, on loan for Otter’s studies in the Bryalt shrine.

If he did, however, let Otter slip to the Bryalt side and learn the catechism, the liberal scholars over in Ilefinian would feed that keen mind with a bolder understanding of the world than their timid brothers down in Henas’amef would have done. The Elwynim Bryaltines would, oh, so gladly make him one of their own—fit him for an orthodox Bryaltine priesthood in Elwynor, or, contrarily, fit him for some high administrative post in his half sister’s court in Elwynor, his half brother’s court in Ylesuin, or a trusted post in either treasury, or in law or even in the Dragon Guard or the Elwynim army. A bastard son could rise very, very high, by merits and wit, given the goodwill of his legitimate siblings, and given a clever mind, such as the boy had: incapable of rule, if his ambitions were still tied to the house of his birth, incorruptible, if those ambitions were adequately satisfied… he could be of great use. His own Commander of the Guard was a case in point.

Though Ninévrisë was right: sending the boy to Elwynor this summer might bring him under priestly influence, but it would remove him from Paisi’s gran, who had been a stabilizing force: lay it to the old woman’s account that that the boy had grown up knowing right from wrong and caring to do right.

Practical things the old woman had taught him, too: how to mend and make, how to judge the weather, how to feed himself off the land, things profitable for a young man to know: Paisi’s gran was an estimable woman, and not the least of her virtues had been her silence, keeping discreet silence on those things that, the more Otter went into the world, the more it was inevitable he know—those deeper details of his mother’s ambitions and the history of the Aswydd house of which he was the last direct descendant.

Of witchery, of her own craft, the old woman had likewise taught him nothing. That had been her choice, he supposed, if it had not been Tristen’s specific instruction, but the course she had chosen had kept Guelen doors open for the boy. She had also kept very much to her small grant of land, had kept the boy remote from the Amefin court—and consequently remote from the bitter sort of gossip the boy was otherwise bound to have had flung at him, where protection from higher authority was not so evident.

All credit to Paisi’s gran—where Emuin had not been available, Gran had done her best.

And best it was, or had been, until now, until it was time to settle a future on him, whether Otter would live the rest of his life in the country tending goats, a lad with a rare bent for scholarship—or whether he would stray out of those bounds when he had grown another few years. It was not for the boy himself to make all those decisions. It was Cefwyn’s obligation.

The slide toward decision had already started: Aewyn had started it, with his invitation. He had watched and made others. The first and easiest courses for a royal bastard were already unlikely: the military was not a likely choice: Otter was slight of build, not the soldierly sort, and he had never learned weapons or horsemanship, years behind other boys. Religious orders were less and less likely as a solution, once one understood that keen wit was prone to question what he was told as dogma: that curiosity would be troublesome for him, even for the Bryaltines.

The time for absolute decision might not be on them yet—but it was surely coming soon. The old furor about wizards and orthodoxy had died down, so reports said. The town of Henas’amef was quiet, mostly forgetting the prisoner lodged in its tower. Otter’s peers were not old enough to have witnessed the events around his birth, and their seniors had more discretion than to shout out the details in the streets. Lord Crissand sat in power in Amefel, with heirs to follow him, and there certainly was no desire on his part to disturb that situation. Time had healed all it could heal in Amefel and kept secret all it could keep. Nothing untoward had happened for over a decade in that province, and that was to the good, was it not?

Lord Crissand had interviewed the boy annually for the last decade and more, reporting him a well-spoken and earnest young man, grateful for his tutoring, anxious to please, asking only for financial advantage to the woman he called his gran. Otter had never once asked for gifts for himself, though he received, annually, at his birthday, a single small and well-chosen remembrance each year, be it a pair of boots or a new shirt from his royal father. Asked what he needed, the boy had said, from year to year, a new axe head, or a cooking pot, or a pair of geese to keep Gran’s yard weeded.

Gran now owned four goats, twelve geese, and, occasionally, though unsuccessfully, pigs, all the modest farm would support, and had avowed herself remarkably content with her wealth and with what she called her two boys. The offered cow the old woman had turned down as far too grand and eating too much for her household, and if she had any complaint, it was about the goats, which had been an occasional trial in her herb garden. That latter asset had brought her most notoriety and profit… he smiled, thinking of the meeting before last and the issue of the goats and the garden: the goats had left the bean rows much faster than goats ordinarily abandoned their intent, startling the Guard’s horses in their escape, and the old woman had been embarrassed.

A witch, a wisewoman in every sense of the word, she was kindly regarded by her neighbors and consulted not infrequently by Duke Crissand himself. Such practitioners and makers of charms were part and parcel of the old beliefs of Amefel—not quite officially countenanced by the Bryalts but not often spoken against, either. An honest and good hedge-witch she remained, despite royal attention, a witch whose cures worked. She probably carried a bit of the old Sihhë blood in her veins. And a peculiar advantage, that would be, in keeping Otter safe from his mother, and keeping Lord Crissand safe, to boot.

So complain as the Holy Father might about witchcraft rampant in Amefel, Paisi’s gran and her connection to the duke of Amefel remained none of the Quinalt’s business. The Quinalt in Amefel had indeed complained, all the way to Guelemara, incensed that a royal bastard was in Gran’s keeping—more incensed that the royal bastard was alive at all if they had told the truth.

But the Otter he had brought to Guelemara late in the year was the very best proof of the old woman’s good teachings, and he was well content with his choices throughout the boy’s life.

Sending the boy to Elwynor to study was the most probable course. He would have to hear Aewyn’s protests when he informed him. Worse, he would have to fend off Aewyn’s demands to go with his bastard brother, to whom he had attached such sudden affection, and who, as best anyone could tell, reciprocated.

He would grant permission for messages back and forth—maybe even allow the use of his couriers. There would be summer visits, holiday visits. He could promise all that. Boyish rivalry and Otter’s frequent letters from Elwynor might, who knew, habituate his heir to the Guelesfort’s library. He could imagine the growth of wisdom in both his sons. And Ninévrisë, whose virtue, whose compassion for her husband’s foreign bastard had made it possible, would be the boy’s official guardian while he was in her kingdom.

Oh, that would confuse the clattering tongues in the bower. His queen was fierce and forthright—oh, never challenge Ninévrisë in a cause she supported; and her simple goodness—

The bloody Marhanen, his grandfather, had taught him how to take and hold, had he not? But Ninévrisë had shown him how to loosen his grip and gain loyalty. It cost so much fear to trust anyone. It challenged his furthest limits of experience.

But two people had shown him how to loosen his hand and let things free to take their own course, and one was Lord Tristen, one was Ninévrisë Syrillas, and he knew he was the luckiest man alive to have had them.

The boys—the boys would benefit, would not lose their friendship, would grow well, even separate. Would become men of sober purpose—sooner or later.

Not too soon, he hoped.

iv

SLEET HISSED AGAINST THE WINDOWS——BARE DARK WINDOWS THAT SHOWED A storm haze above the spine-backed roof of the Quinaltine. Light from the banked fire, a warmer hue, sifted in from the other room, touching the edges of things, spilling across the wooden floor and the vine-figured rug.

It was a good night to be warm abed, and Otter had made himself a warm spot in smooth woven linen, when coarse wool and rabbit skins had kept them warm at home. The sheets had a wonderful feel to them; the pillows were several and soft. Paisi snored beside him, and the Festival and duties seemed far and unthreatening, part of the daylight, not the windblown dark. The windows held their own fear: such an expanse of glass, in little diamond panes, such a wonder to behold, from such warmth and softness.

In the cottage they would have had the shutters closed tight and barred against such a storm, and they would have stuffed the cracks besides, but the thin glass held out the wind and the cold alike—or most of it: the servants had advised they should shut the drapes to keep the cold out, but the glazed windows were such a delight to them both that they kept opening the drapes again and keeping them open at night, which they never would the shutters, except in summer. The sleet that fell now was too fine to see from where he lay. But if one defied the cold to get up and stand near the window, he was sure he would find the sill all snow-covered, and a ghostly snow coming down beyond, the whole sky aglow with it, and it haloed about the torch he could see from that window.

The floors were too cold tonight to tempt him. If he wanted to leave his warm spot, he ought to throw a log on the fire while he was at it—but he stayed right where he was.

When he shut his eyes to the window he recalled the high walls of the courtyard that afternoon, remembered soaked gloves, cold fingers, horseplay, and snowballs. He had caught Aewyn with his head up and gotten snow down his back, then Aewyn had pelted him with two, hard and fast, never minding being hit. Before all was done they were laughing too much to make more snowballs, and only raked it up and threw it with no art at all, showering each other at the last in a flurry of white.

It was the best winter, the best winter ever. All his life he had thought, what if my father should send for me? And what if he wanted me to serve in the court?

He had imagined being a servant, a clerk. He had never dreamed of such fine clothes, wonderful clothes, like holiday every day, and delicate food, as much as they ever wanted, with no chores to do. It was a strange feeling, to be at play all day long, every day, with no water to carry…

Except Paisi directed those who did, boys who trudged up high steps with full buckets of steaming water or pitchers of plain; or servants who carried up the trays of food and took the scraps down. Paisi had no chores of the ordinary sort, but it troubled him that his father’s largesse did not altogether encompass Paisi, for his sake. He wanted to protest that state of affairs. He tried to think what he would say to his father on that matter, if he had a chance, and feared he would lose all the words—and feared he would incur his father’s wrath by trying to tell him what to give and to whom.

As it was, Paisi had no chores, except to tell others what to do, which Paisi seemed to enjoy for its own sake. There was that to make him happy.

And Aewyn—Aewyn was every bit his friend, as he’d always been when his father would ride by Gran’s farm, and a blond, frowning boy would get down from the saddle—frowning, that was, and quiet, only until they could get off by themselves by the side of the cottage and get a few words between them.

“Papa says you’re my half brother,” Aewyn had said, in the first days when their voices had been high and childish: he could remember that curly blond head, that fresh, rose-touched face, and those blue, blue eyes staring at him. Otter, dark as Aewyn was fair, had dug his toe in the dirt, and said, faintly, conscious of the king talking to Gran around by the front door: “The king is my father.”

Aewyn had frowned, thoughtfully, and he had thought the blond boy would be angry to hear that, though it was the truth he told. He had been six, and Aewyn was still five, so he understood.

“So you are my half brother,” Aewyn had said again, then proceeded to show him his particular treasure, a toy he had picked up in town, a horse whose legs moved.

Otter had never held a toy Gran or Paisi had not made. Aewyn had given it to him, and left with one of his, a carved boat, which Aewyn said next year that he had lost in the brook while his father was hunting, and he was ever so sorry to confess it. So Paisi had made him another, which Aewyn still had, locked away, and never had sailed it.

Aewyn was in every regard like his father: athletic, blond, tall, and easy to love, even when he had done something he ought not. His father loved him, that was ever so clear: the king laughed, lifting Aewyn down from his pony on that visit, in vast and easy strength. Then he had turned sober and frowning, looking down at him, looking him straight in the eyes, until Otter remembered to duck his head and look down and bow.

“Elfwyn.” His father had used his real name, though no one ever did. “Are you a good boy?”

“I try to be, Your Majesty.” His father asked that question every year. It had sounded foolish even to a boy of six, seven, and eight.

By then he had learned to be jealous, and for all his eighth winter he was jealous of Aewyn: he had stood before Lord Crissand, every year, to be asked much the same questions, and, true, to be given something fine for a gift, then asked what he needed. He rather liked Lord Crissand, in the way he liked sunlight: it was always there, and so was the lord in the great keep, watching over everything. But long before then, he had been taken to the priests, and taught his reading and writing, and that year was given more advanced books to read, which the priests—one in particular—said was as useful as teaching a dog to cipher. He had been certain then that they would never say that of blond, tall Aewyn. Everyone loved Aewyn, just because he existed.

So that year he had turned glum and quiet, and had not been sure he wanted to talk to Aewyn at first after Aewyn had gotten off his horse, but Aewyn had nudged him with an elbow and almost started an argument, which Paisi had stopped, and the two of them had run away to see the new lambs, and hid when Paisi had come looking for them. The king and all his men were waiting on their horses, and had been waiting, as Paisi said, and he had said to Aewyn, “We have to go back. Your father will be furious.”

“Oh, he might be,” Aewyn had said. “But not that much.”

And by that time Aewyn had gotten tall and strong enough to hold him, and hurt his arm, keeping him from running back to the house. He’d been terrified when Aewyn ducked him back into different cover. And the king of all Ylesuin had gotten down from his horse and come searching with Paisi and Gran. He had been too frightened to open his mouth, though he could see them through the leaves of the bush where they were hiding.

“Aewyn!” the king had shouted, and Aewyn had come out, laughing because no one had found them, and insisted he come out, too.

“That was damned dangerous,” Paisi had said that night, after the royal procession was long gone. “ ’E ain’t to trifle with, Otter. ’E ain’t.”

“I know so,” he’d said, and Gran, her shuttle flying and the harnesses clacking, had said: “Someday the Otter’s going to go down that road. Someday he’ll go find his own way in the world. He’s got to be wise when he does.”

He’d understood then that something had passed between Gran and the king, and ever after, Paisi talked about him going to seek his fortune in Guelessar, in service to the king. Paisi had said that one day his father would call him over, and ask how he had grown, and if his father liked the answers he gave that day, he might find him a place in court, maybe to be a clerk or minister, or to serve with the army, to ride a horse and carry a sword as an officer of the Guard.

“As I can’t teach ye too much about horses that ye ain’t learnt of goats, but I can show ye the sword,” Paisi had said. “I don’t know it well, but I can show ye some.”

They had practiced to be the king’s soldiers, then, with sticks, and with the quarterstaff, which Paisi could indeed use very well, and which had raised no few occasions for Gran’s poultices. He had had no great skill at the staff, when all was done. Paisi kept knocking him down, and once knocked him senseless, to Gran’s and Paisi’s dismay. So he applied himself with greater zeal to the books.

This year, however, after the king’s riding by and Aewyn asking him to come visit him in Guelessar, the King’s Dragon Guard had come, the captain of the Guard detail bearing a letter, and two grooms bringing light horses, for him and for Paisi to ride to the capital.

He had never ridden a horse. He managed not to fall off on the way. His was a bay gelding named Feiny and Paisi’s was a piebald named Tammis— and he had learned from the grooms how to see to the horses’ feet and what a horse needed, the same as he knew for the goats and geese. He was delighted to get along fairly well with the horse—he had grown less and less sure he would manage as well with people in Guelemara, and by the time he saw the walls of the city he had been terrified. He had looked forward to a summons from his father, and now faced the reality with deep trepidation, the more so as he rode into a Quinalt city, where witchcraft meant death by fire or hanging, and where, now, he had to face a brother who’d been his friend in the farmyard, where he was the one who knew all the places beyond the fences. Now he knew nothing at all.

He had been so scared when he rode into the courtyard of the Guelesfort. He had been thinking for the last two days of the journey that Aewyn might think differently about him in his own yard, or might even forget that he had asked for him, or grow bored with him after a day or two. But all that fear had flowed out of him when Aewyn had run down the steps to the stable yard and held Feiny’s bridle for him, despite the hovering grooms.

It had been that way between them from that day forward. Aewyn had been so looking forward to a brother. He had gotten a sister instead. He loved baby Aemaryen, to be sure. But, as Aewyn put it, even a brother wouldn’t have been that good, lying around most of the time, and crying and wanting all his mother’s attention whenever he tried to talk to her.

Besides, Aewyn informed him, his sister would grow up to be Regent of Elwynor, and maybe queen of that kingdom, and would never even live in Guelessar at all once she was of age: it would not be her choice, when it happened, but it meant she would go away. The lords’ sons let Aewyn win at every game, and their fathers were always looking for advantage and gathering gossip. So a brother was his heart’s desire, and when he had put it to his father this year, his father had agreed.

It was the happiest winter. The very happiest of Otter’s life, little of it as he had had yet. He had expected to leave before this. He was sure he would have to leave in spring. He would ride back to Gran’s in time for him and Paisi to do the planting, then—

Then—would come a difficult question. He would want to come back to Guelessar. He would want to go riding with Aewyn, and just—be here and live here the way things were now. But he missed Gran, too, and Gran needed him, and especially needed Paisi. Even if the king wanted him to stay here, the way Paisi and Gran had always said he might do, he still had to get home when he was needed—and that meant leaving Aewyn, the thought of which had already begun to hurt.

But he did long for home, too. He could see the cottage with his eyes shut.

He could see the thatch snow-covered as it would be, now, since the recent snowfalls, and the yard and shed roof alike under a thick white blanket. It had that clarity of a true dream, the edges unnaturally fine and clear in the night, just as if he were looking at it tonight. It comforted him.

But there was no smoke from the chimney, and there ought to be: there was always a little smoke, even at night. Certainly the snow never collected atop it. And he tried to dream of the inside of the cottage, and to dream of Gran, to be sure she was safe. He imagined her asleep in her bed, under the patchwork quilt, but imagine as he would, the only thing he could see, more and more insistently, was the chimney, the very top of the chimney, as close as he had seen it when he had climbed up with Paisi to mend the thatch last fall. A thick rim of snow lay about the vent. The warmth should have melted it, as fast as the snow fell. But it had snowed the chimney almost shut.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and he could not find Gran and he could not wake up, not without a great struggle, as if the dream did not want to let him go.

He reached out with his hand. He found the bedclothes cold. Paisi was gone, nowhere to be found. He was alone in the bed, and he sat up, flinging the covers back.

A strange sight met him, Paisi sitting on the hearthstones in the other room, a huddled shape just sitting on the hearth between two good chairs. The light of dawn was in the windows, a gray and icy dawn.

“Paisi?” he said, but Paisi didn’t move.

He fought his way to the edge of the thick feather bed and rolled out and down, his feet meeting the icy floor. He dragged a coverlet off, wrapping it around him as he went.

“Paisi?”

Paisi still didn’t move. Otter sank down to his knees and shook Paisi by the arm. Paisi was cold on one side and overly warm on the other.

“The fire ain’t lit,” Paisi said, gazing into the coals. “She’s abed sick, an’ the fire ain’t lit.”

He felt chill himself and thought to wrap the coverlet around Paisi, who let it fall.

“Paisi?” He closed Paisi’s hand on the cloth. “Take it.”

Paisi’s hand closed and he held on to it, still looking into the coals, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t see ’er, Otter. The cottage is dark, an’ the fire ain’t lit.”

“I dreamed, too, about the chimney being out. I dreamed it just now.”

“She’s fevered,” Paisi said. “She’s got the fever, she ain’t fed ’erself since yesterday.”

“What can we do, Paisi?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.” The note of unreasoning fear in Paisi’s voice would have sent a chill through him if none had been there to start with. “You dreamed it, too?”

“I dreamed about the chimney.”

“The fire,” Paisi said. “The fire not bein’ lit, in this weather—”

“We can tell the king!”

“About what, Otter-lad? Can we tell him we dreamed it? Can we talk about dreams wi’ these Quinalt priests hoverin’ near? She’s sick abed, is what. That damn chimney’s choked up again, and it never were right. I wanted to tear that crooked thing down this summer an’ build it anew, an’ she wouldn’t have it, no, no, the fields wants weedin’, the shed wants the door fixed, it ain’t no great matter, run a stick up it, and it’ll do, it’s always done. If the smoke don’t kill us in our sleep… Damn it, Otter-lad!” Paisi ran his hands through his hair so it stood on end. “Maybe I’m makin’ trouble that ain’t trouble. Maybe she’ll wake up and take one of ’er potions, won’t she? She’ll poke the broom handle up an’ unstick that chimney.”

“If she can reach it.”

“Oh, I was worri’t leavin’ her! We stacked that firewood high as she could deal with, but the rest in the shed, it’s all big pieces, an’ if her coughin’ starts up fierce…”

“Look, she can bring the animals inside. Remember the winter we did that. They’ll heat a room.”

“That don’t feed them. Or her.”

He drew a deep breath. “Paisi, it’s just three days back there.”

“It ain’t three days wi’ this storm.”

“But wouldn’t you go?”

“Aye,” Paisi said. “Aye. I would. I would. But she’ll skin me. I swore I’d watch over ye!”

“We could tell the king, all the same, and he’d keep secret how we knew. He was Lord Tristen’s friend. Wizard-work isn’t any surprise to him.”

“There is that.”

“He could just write a letter to Lord Crissand.”

“Oh, aye, and they’d take their time, and some soldiers would come out t’ th’ house an’ ask if she was well, and she’d swear she was well if she was dying.”

“Then go, go right this morning and see how she is, and fix the chimney. And then I’ll tell the king what’s happened, and I’ll come after, soon as I can.”

“No, now, me lord, don’t be foolish.”

“I’m not ‘my lord.’ ”

“Ye’re his son. The king give ye them fine clothes for holiday. He’s got ’is mind set, is what. It’s what you got to do. I’ll go see to Gran, and you stay an’ do as ye have to.”

“And what will I do if Gran died?”

“Don’t say it!” Paisi said, and made a ward sign against the thought. “Oh, I should ’ave prepared better! I should ha’ fixed that damn chimney…”

“You did everything you could! We didn’t reckon with the snow just keeping on and on like this. We didn’t plan on Gran needing help, but you know what she says: some dreams are a warning, is all, and it’s what may happen, not what is happening.”

“Oh, aye, an’ I’ll walk in and she’ll curse me for a fool. But if it is a warning-dream, we’re summat ahead of it, ain’t we? But ye’re right. I’ll see to that chimney, then come on back, wi’ no delay.”

“You’ll get there before the Bryalt holidays start, as is. And if it’s nothing, Paisi, you should just stay the whole holidays with Gran. This isn’t going to be like ours.”

“Oh, that ain’t fair, an’ you wi’ nobody to see ye get meals…”

“I can perfectly well see to myself! And you can be there to spend holiday with her, so she’s not alone.”

“I ain’t at all sure.”

“Have a cake at the shrine and think of me. I’ll be perfectly safe, and you can write to me straightway as you get there and let me know how things are.”

“Now ’ow will I get a letter out?”

“Well, they change out the Guard every month, don’t they, even in bad weather. And if it’s a message to somebody in the Guelesfort, they’ll carry it. They will. And coming home, you know they’ll go as fast as they can.” He took comfort in the plan. It was one of his best. “Which is as fast as the king sending somebody, isn’t it? That’s how the merchants send things.”

“Still,” Paisi said.

“If it turns out I have a place here through spring, you know, you’d only have to go back when the garden goes in. You know Gran can’t do the heavy plow—she’ll put the garden in, but the rest will take the push-plow, won’t it?”

“Farmer Ost’ll bring his oxen over. He’d do it for her. That were the plan, that were what she said, if need be.”

“Well, but then Gran will have your help doing the other things. So you could just stay on a little.”

“You’re trying to make me stay there the spring, and I said I wouldn’t!”

“I’m not.”

“Are so. You and Aewyn are having a rare good time—as should be, m’lord, don’t mistake me.”

“We’ll be perfectly well.”

“Only so you stay friends while I’m gone and don’t get in any trouble. Boys is apt to quarrels.”

“I shan’t, with him, Paisi. He’s my friend, he’s my true friend, besides being my brother.”

“Gods hear that ’un, Otter-lad. But I’ll feel better if I know Gran’s set.”

“And you come back to me when the chores are done and the planting is in.”

“But if I go—if I go, how’s you even to draw your bath or get your food in this great place? You don’t know the ways…”

“Once you’re well away, and they can’t stop you,” Otter said, “then I can tell the king, and he’ll see I have someone.”

“Oh, somebody in my place, will he be? I won’t like that!”

“Never in your place, Paisi. You’re my brother.”

A grunt. “Which I ain’t, an’ that’s the fact an’ ye know it. Nor be so cheeky wi’ ’Is Majesty, neither, wi’ askin’ for help as if ye’re due the sun an’ the moon besides. It’s dangerous to assume about lords at all. They can be generous, but they got their moments, too, an’ they think thoughts we don’t know about, so don’t be cheeky an’ don’t tell ’im too late.”

“He won’t be angry. He’ll just be glad we saw to matters ourselves, and it’s not as if I’m going to starve here for a day.”

“Well, ye may, if ye ain’t careful. Ye can’t store food here, not on Fast Day. Ye got to clean the place out an’ go without food in the premises, dawn to dark.”

“I’ll find my own way to the kitchens perfectly well, I’ll follow every rule, and I promise, Paisi, I promise no one will ever, ever take your place. I’ll wear my Festival clothes and sit and listen to us being cursed, being ever so quiet and good, and you—you take your holiday clothes home. You can be quite the sight in the Bryalt festival, won’t you? You’ll have the Guelen Guard saluting you.”

“Oh, m’lord, I’d look the fool. They’d arrest me on the spot!”

“Well, then, but Gran at least should see you in your fancy clothes, shouldn’t she?” Otter flung himself to his feet and pulled Paisi up to his. “And we sit planning when we should be doing. Get what you need. Take the short sword with you. It’s just getting light. We can get out to the stables.”

“What’s to do at the stables? My horse is way down in pasture.”

“Feiny’s here.”

“He’s the king’s gift!”

“He’s mine, and you can borrow him. Now, now listen. There’ll only be the one boy in the stables until after breakfast. You dress in your livery, so’s you look important. I’ll ride down to the gate, you walk with me, and then we go out the gate and get your Tammis out of pasture, and there you’ll be, on the road…”

“… lookin’ rich as a lord and ripe for robbers. And where’s a bridle nor even a halter for me horse?”

“Well, but you can wear your plain cloak, then, after you’re away, and change later. And I’ll get a bridle for Tammis when I get Feiny. You can take Feiny’s saddle for Tammis, and there you are!”

“Feiny’s bigger n’ Tammis. And look at it comin’ down, out there, even yet! Ye’re apt to fall off wi’ no saddle, ye’ll come back half-froze, if ye don’t get lost out there, and wouldn’t your father hear about that?”

“Well, well, then take Feiny once we reach the gate.”

“Oh, now I’m ridin’ ’Is Majesty’s own gift.”

“He’s mine to lend.”

“Oh, aye… an’ how am I to feed that tall great horse once I get home wi’ ’im, for that matter? We never did know that bit, when your father give us them horses—wherever’s food for them? Gran don’t have it.”

“Well.” It was a question worth thinking about. “You’ll just have to go to the duke and ask.”

“Just go to ’Is Lordship an’ bid ’im feed my horse, please.”

“Exactly that.”

“Oh, gods.”

“Lord Crissand will understand. He knows you come from me. He knows I went to the king.”

“If the king ain’t sent to ’im by then, askin’ a horse thief be hanged on sight!”

“Lord Crissand won’t be angry. Neither will the king. I swear he won’t. Don’t hesitate to go to the duke. Ask him what you have to ask for, for you and Gran, and say I told you to do it. I’ll tell my father what I’ve done long before any message can get there.”

“And if somehow you need a horse to get away?”

“Tammis is a perfectly fine horse for me, and he’s still in pasture, isn’t he?”

“ ’E’s a piebald, and lords don’t ride piebalds.”

“Well, I’m not really a lord, then, am I? And if you’re not back, and Aewyn and I go hunting after Festival, I can perfectly well go down to the pasture and get him, and bring him up to stable for the trip, and feed him apples the while so he’ll be fat as a pig.”

“Oh, aye, them damn apples!”

“We can’t get them. That plan is done, Paisi. You just have to go.”

“Well, I thought of something to think on. Your horse is a stable horse, and he don’t have his winter coat. He ain’t fit for the cold.”

“He has the barding, doesn’t he? I’ll have it on him. Just keep the blanket on him most times at Gran’s, and at night while you’re on the road.”

Paisi looked at him long and hard. “I don’t like it, m’lord. I don’t like it. I swear the king is going to be huntin’ a stolen horse, an’ me on ’im.”

“Well, they aren’t even going to feed him up here on the holy day, with all their fine care, are they? With you he’ll have something to eat on Fast Day, and we’ll take care of Gran, which is what we have to do, no matter what. You do it, Paisi, you do it for me. Let me deal with matters here.”

“All the same—”

“Do you trust me?”

“Aye, aye, I trust ye. I trust ’Is Majesty, and probably I trust Lord Crissand.”

“You know how to do these things.”

“Steal, d’ ye mean, little Otter? Aye, I can do that. An’ me sense is tellin’ me go plain and go quiet, an’ not wi’ any lord’s horse, if I had a choice.”

“But he’s the only sure horse we can get to in this weather.”

“Aye,” Paisi said reluctantly and with a deep heave of his shoulders. “Aye, that’s so.”

v

OTTER REACHED THE STABLES AND SLIPPED IN BY THE LITTLE SIDE DOOR. Inside, there was only the one boy, dozing in a stall. Otter padded softly past that gate, with the bundles he brought from their chambers—two blankets too fine for rough use, good woolen blankets to keep one warm; and Paisi’s razor, and his working knife, all wrapped in Paisi’s heavy outdoor cloak, along with the short sword Paisi had had since the war. Paisi was making his own trip to the kitchens, in indoor clothing, saying he was to fetch up a breakfast for a peevish young master, but in fact taking a spare shirt to wrap up several rolls and a sausage from whatever tray they provided.

Otter’s mission was to provide grain, a lot of grain, against the cold and hard going—they had learned on their journey here what an appetite a horse had when there was no time nor chance for grazing, and this snow, covering what grass there was, would make matters worse. He carefully eased up the latch on the granary door—it was well gated against hungry strays. He had brought a sack of sorts, a fine handworked pillow casing; but he discovered instead several rougher, sturdier bags on a nail beside the door, and took two of those for the purpose instead. He slid up the little slat and filled the bags as full as he dared, as much as he hoped might see Feiny and his immense appetite down the road. He tied the two together with twine saved on a peg, the stable’s thrifty habit.

Then he slipped back out and latched the granary door, having by stealth ruled every need that might raise particular questions. He soft-footed it back to the outer door and this time let it thump loudly shut, as if he had just come in, setting the grain down in the shadow beside him.

Horses stirred in their stalls. The stableboy waked. Otter couldn’t quite see Feiny, whose stall was down at the end of the row. He waited, grand as any lord, and the stableboy came out, straw clinging to his hair and his coat in the white light of dawn.

“Your lordship?” the boy asked.

“I need my horse.”

A little stare. The boy scratched his head, and his ribs, still sleepy, and not as inquisitive as Otter might have been in his place—but he had often enough come here at odd hours to see Feiny, he and Paisi both, they being farmerfolk and missing the goats and geese. Having Feiny to fuss over and feed had been a warm and familiar thing for them, and the stableboy never minded their doing his work, once he’d understood they truly wanted to feed and water and curry one of his charges. It was surely only a small step more to say he wanted to ride out at this gray hour, and it would not pose a problem, Otter hoped, that would make the stableboy wake the stablemaster.

“Aye, your lordship.” Still scratching, the boy walked on toward Feiny’s stall and the tack room, in a murk so thick at that end of the stable that only the posts and fronts of the stalls were visible. Otter picked up his heavy sacks and followed after.

“All his tack, if you please,” Otter said. He had learned that word.

“The bardin’, too, your lordship?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Aye, your lordship,” the boy said, never asking where they were going, or why the odd hour, or any such thing. It was all too easy, and Otter restrained himself with difficulty when the boy went after the tack and hauled it back to the stall-side, piece by heavy piece. On any other day he would have found it hard to stand and not help, but now the safety of their plan rested on the boy’s doing what he asked with no asking questions in return, and standing in the shadow assured the boy had no one to ask. The boy gathered everything, the heavy quilted-felt barding and all. Then he led Feiny out, Feiny with his rest disturbed, and in no particularly good spirits at this hour.

The boy simply put on the bridle and left the halter hanging on the fence, whence, when the boy ducked down to get the saddle, Otter simply lifted it and tucked it and its lead rope up with the blanket bundle he carried.

The saddle went on, all in silence, the boy quite content to be let alone at his work, and the buckles were buckled and the cinch was tightened—Feiny let out a deep, discontented sigh and shook his neck until all the loose parts flew.

“That’s good,” Otter said, and took Feiny’s bridle. “That’s very good.” He began to lead Feiny about and down the aisle toward the outside, hauling everything he had under one arm and with one straining hand, under his cloak, and trying not to let his burden appear heavy. The boy murmured a courtesy and went to open the door for him, letting him out into the breeze and the gray dawn. Feiny put his ears up and back again as the cold wind blew into his face. He began to dance about on the cleared and sanded cobbles outside.

“Shall ye need a hand?” the boy asked.

“No, no, it’s quite enough, thank you. Go back in and stay warm.”

“Thank ye, your lordship.” The boy bowed and ducked back into the warmth, and Otter drew the reins close and steadied Feiny by the old stone border that gave him a convenient step for getting up. Feiny decided not to stand at all, nor give him a convenient way to get the baggage onto Feiny’s back. It became a circular chase, him and Feiny, until from around the corner Paisi showed up, himself cloaked and laden with improvised baggage, to lend a hand.

“Did you have any trouble?” Otter asked, trying to get the heavy grain sacks across Feiny’s neck.

“None,” Paisi said. He was wearing his field boots, and his good heavy cloak, and showed a flour sack he had gotten. “Sausages, a good white loaf, and cheese, white an’ yellow. I said ye was fussy an’ out of sorts, so’s ye know your state when ye get back to your rooms, m’lord.”

“Hold him,” Otter said, and with Paisi’s help got the grain sacks across the saddlebow, at which Feiny sidestepped and threw his head, stamping one shod rear hoof like the crack of doom.

“Stop it,” Paisi said, shortened up the reins, and slapped Feiny sharply on the shoulder. “Don’t you kick, ye rascal.”

More baggage went up. Otter struggled with the saddle ties atop the quilted barding, hoping not to have the blankets and sacks spilling in opposite directions, and he stood on the stone curb to tie the knots. It was a poor job. It made no orderly bundle, but it stayed, at least, until he could get his foot in the stirrup and get into the saddle.

Paisi handed him up the reins. It was their plan to go out like man and servant—young lords were prone to errands at the edge of dawn and dark, not the sort, Paisi said, that the gate-guards were apt to question, and if asked, he had to say he was visiting a friend.

Lies, again, but the sort that would get Paisi on his way. Beneath his cloak, Paisi had all the coin they had but his lucky pennies, the small hoard that Gran had given them—“Which I won’t need,” Gran had said, pressing her savings on them, “but who knows, in the city?”

Who knew, indeed? But with the pennies, Paisi could stop at farmhouses and buy a place for him and Feiny to sleep, out of the wind, and perhaps buy more grain than what he had, if Feiny ate it all.

Feiny started to move—the horse was inclined to move the moment he had someone on his back, never mind where, and frequently in an inconvenient direction. Otter anxiously drew the reins in to the least freedom Feiny ought to have, and pressed him with his knee, and turned him toward the gate, a direction not to Feiny’s liking. But he let Feiny know with his knee and his hands that he was bent on that gate ahead of them, and that Feiny shouldn’t throw his head and try to shoulder Paisi down. He had never been inclined to hit the horse, as the grooms said he should; but this morning he desperately gave Feiny a sharp kick and a short rein, and with a sigh, as if it had been a mere annoyance, Feiny went toward the gate.

It was shut at this hour. Paisi went first to the gate warden’s post and rapped at the little oaken door. “The watch, there!”

Otter bit his lip and kept Feiny still while Paisi talked to the gatekeepers and requested the gate open. The gatekeeper came out, carrying a lantern nearly useless in the growing dawn, and held it aloft for a passing look at Otter’s face. Then: “Ye better watch that ’un,” the guard muttered, he hoped regarding the horse, which was backing and stamping a hind foot, and signaled the other man to run the chain back on the iron gates.

The gates moved quietly on their hinges, well-kept gates, opening just a little earlier than ordinary, and Paisi walked by Otter’s stirrup as they moved briskly through, Feiny turning a wary and misgiving eye to the gate wardens.

They went out onto the high street and along the stone wall where the great Quinaltine hulked against the dawn sky ahead of them. There, under that vast and disapproving stone presence, they crossed the square and took the downward street as the light grew. Merchants opened their shutters and began to set out their wares. Housewives swept their steps clean of snow, and stared at their passage with more curiosity than Otter liked.

Perhaps the stablemaster would wake and ask where Feiny had gone. Perhaps soldiers would come to stop them before they got to the gate.

But no one spoke. Merchants stared as they passed and looked up the gray and lonely street as if they expected to see more than two riders.

Paisi, walking briskly at Feiny’s head, said not a word, not all during the long way down, not when they began to see a few other people coming up the hill toward the market square, one man with a mule, several men carrying bundles behind him. There began to be more such, and Otter breathed more easily. They had passed the delicate moments in which they were the only travelers on the street, and become less conspicuous, to Otter’s way of thinking.

It was the western gate they chose, the lower end of Market Street, where a sparse weekday market was spreading its canvas, only three merchants as yet beginning to offer wares on a threatening and snowy morning, and those the sort of goods that might fare best on such a day: knit goods, dyed wool, and hot cider.

The city gates beyond were open, now, a fresh scrape in the snow to show where they’d moved, not long ago at all. And blocking those gates, a small outbound company of pack mules and packhorses milled about. A pair of merchants, wrapped up in cloaks, were talking with the gate wardens.

Here was the place Otter chose to get down, screened by the small caravan, the two of them afoot and anxious.

“ ’Ere might be a lucky thing,” Paisi said in a low voice. “Wait an’ look wise.”

Otter opened his mouth to ask what Paisi intended, but Paisi ducked away from him, walked in among the mules, and a few moments later came back with one of the merchants, a respectable-looking graybeard hooded against the snow.

“This is indeed your man, your lordship?” the merchant asked.

Look wise, Paisi had said, and Otter had stood lookout for Paisi in little mischiefs before, in Amefel. His part was to be the lord, and he stood as tall as he could and pretended he was Aewyn. “He is, sir.”

“As they’re goin’ by way of the monastery at Anwyfar, m’lord,” Paisi said, “an’ they’ll feed me an’ the ’orse for as long as I ride alongside, it bein’ safer wi’ another rider in the company. A pack train, an’ all mounted, can move right along in this snow.”

There were now and again robbers to fear on the roads, when the weather made men desperate. It was a handsome offer, good for both parties, and the merchants clearly took Paisi for a lord’s personal messenger.

“As they’ll break any drifts wi’ them big mules, and switch the lead about,” Paisi said, “an’ it’ll be far easier an’ faster.”

Far faster. Otter found his heart beating hard, perhaps simply because their plan was finding great good luck, and he nodded. “A good idea,” he said, taking Paisi’s word as law. He handed over Feiny’s reins. “Excellent.” It was one of the king’s own words, in the king’s tone. “Be safe.”

The last words were not lordly: they were desperate. Paisi’s gloved hand took the reins.

“M’lord,” Paisi said, with a huskiness in his voice. “I’ll be quick as I can.”

“Do,” Otter said, then it was the plan, clearly, that he keep on being the lord and simply walk away, leaving the details to Paisi, who would travel far, far more safely by reason of the merchants.

Luck. Happenstance. Everything had fallen into place so neatly— everyone who could have opposed them had just not happened by, had not looked out their windows, or turned up in the stable early, and the gate wardens had showed no suspicion at all. It was done, and now Paisi would do what he promised and see to Gran, in the hopes that all their good fortune was just that.

Gran could bend luck. She claimed to bend it ever so little, being only a hedge-witch, but that they had been so lucky might be good news, that Gran’s witchery was working; or bad news, that Gran was in direst need and bent luck around them, who were hers, in great desperation to get help.

All Otter could do now was to wrap his cloak about him, keeping the hood up, and trudge uphill in an increasing snowfall that misted the high hill. White made the great Quinaltine into a hazy ghost of itself and all but obscured the Guelesfort and its walls and towers. Only the streets were real, and those cold, snow-edged brown beams and gray stone. The walks and cobbles were all snowed over in a sheet of scarcely tracked white, except the few open shops, and traffic down the center of the street. Newly swept and sanded porches began to be covered again. People were at breakfast, generally. Only the baker enjoyed a brisk traffic of young boys and housewives, an area which he skirted, unremarkable, brown-cloaked, and curtained by the snow.

He was lonely already, but—he said to himself—he had to be a man. For the first time he was altogether on his own, and for the interval between now and having the king’s help, he would not have Paisi telling him do this or do that. Manhood began with getting through the day without giving anything away, sleeping alone for the first time in his life, and seeing himself fed and bathed and dressed for Festival tomorrow.

Manhood meant explaining what he had done, as soon as he could, as soon as Paisi was inconveniently far away, and it meant taking whatever blame might fall on him, from the king, from his father, who had invited him here and given him Feiny for his own.

That he did not look forward to with any pleasure at all. He would do that when the time was right, but well before any accusation got to his father, who would pay little attention to the ordinary running of the Guelesfort and ask no questions of the various staff and guards until someone grew troubled enough to pass a report up the line. Once Paisi was too far to overtake, he thought, the king might frown and be angry about it, but he would let Paisi go on to reach Gran. That was the essential thing.

vi

THE LUCK CONTINUED. THE GUELESFORT GUARDS ASKED NO QUESTIONS OF HIM except, “Are ye well, m’lord?”

“Oh, yes,” Otter answered them, and added, perhaps foolishly: “I sent my man on an errand.”

“Aye, m’lord,” the captain said, as if a little surprised to be told that, and that was all he said.

Otter avoided the stable precinct entirely, skirting all the way around the yard to a side door that mostly servants used, inside and up a scantly lighted stair to the main floor, and upward again.

He was hungry now. His breakfast was on its way to Amefel with Paisi, and he was not foolish enough to go down to the kitchen asking for more. He took off the cloak and slung it over his arm as he climbed. The next was the floor where his rooms were, but that was also the floor where the king’s and the queen’s chambers were, with their guards, and where Aewyn’s was, more to the point, guards who regularly dealt with him and who might tell Aewyn he was behaving oddly. He climbed up yet one more level of the Guelesfort, and yet another, up where the household servants lived in far less circumstance and far narrower rooms. The dim upper hall was the regular means by which he and Aewyn had skirted watchful guards and gotten past the central stairs, and he used it this time, passing this and that servant, who bowed or bobbed and gave him the whole hallway as he went, not unaccustomed to see a youngster here.

At the farthest end of the servants’ level was another narrow stairs that led down past a narrow slit of a window, which dimly lit the passage above, and by this stairs, he descended back to his own hall—a long, polished hall largely untenanted in winter, except for him. At this end of the hall, the last watch-candles had burned down to guttering stubs, overpowered by the light of the tall windows at the landing of the central stairs.

His part of the hall was in shadow, and with a considerable agitation he opened his own door and slipped into his own empty rooms.

Their fire was all coals, lending heat to the room. The tall windows, on which the curtains were drawn back, were milky with frost but gave their cold, dim light. The last remnants of Paisi’s preparations remained on the little table, the things he had thought Paisi should take, like bits of cord and the fine new boots, which Paisi had declined. Paisi had worn all his shirts, and both his pairs of trousers, for warmth. The good boots, he said he would not take, but he had worn his second-best.

And all was done.

Now Otter had only to wait, and delay notice of their conspiracy.

He started to sit down on the fireplace stones, in the homey way, but he took the chair instead, constrained to be a man, and a lord at that, and to command the servants and maintain a young lord’s dignity—if he had to order servants about, it was hardly the time to have soot on one’s knees or scuffed boots. He shifted his feet down when the soles grew too hot, watched the line of moisture ebb on the darkened leather: lord he might pretend to be, but he had to tend his own soaked boots and rub the luster back into them to cover the evidence—he was obliged to put away their leavings and make his bed and do all those things Paisi had been doing since he came here, things which he very well knew how to do. At Gran’s, bedmaking was a matter of throwing a coverlet over and making a sitting place out of their sleeping place. Here, all the bedclothes were ordered, and precise, and immaculate.

If he could keep up the pretense for three days, he thought, and not let slip to Aewyn that Paisi was gone, then Paisi could get as far as Averyne crossing, where he would pass into Amefel, well, granted the snow might make his passage somewhat slower—but close enough.

There was a flaw in their plan, which loomed perfectly clear now that everything was beyond recall: the stablemaster, and Feiny, and Feiny’s empty stall. The stablemaster would ask the stableboy, the stableboy would say that Feiny had gone out in the earliest light, then—then the stablemaster, who knew who Feiny belonged to, would start wondering what the king’s bastard son was up to and when he would come back. He might waste a little time inquiring down the hill and asking someone to find out whether Paisi’s horse was still in pasture, but possibly not.

Despite all that luck could do, by dark, perhaps even by noon, the stablemaster might ask questions of the gate wardens uptown and down, and the gate wardens were attached to the Guard Commander, and the Guard Commander might start thinking that perhaps he should tell the king’s personal guard or the seniormost of the king’s servants that the king’s son had failed to bring Feiny back from an early-morning ride.

But he had told the gate warden, hadn’t he, that he had sent Paisi on an errand, so there. That might bring the question down to Feiny’s being missing, with all his gear, and the stableboy having been part of it, the boy might be in for punishment for having helped them. He was worried on that account, but he knew nothing he could do that would not put their plans at risk and possibly have Paisi in trouble. He would have to make it up to the boy if he took a beating.

The word would eventually get to his father, however, by whatever route, and he would do well to tell his father first, would he not?

He hoped that all the luck that had run with them was now going with Paisi, because it suddenly seemed to be quite precarious, where he sat.

He could run down the hall and beg audience. But the king was busy with important things, and news of his misdeeds would not find sympathy with anyone in the king’s entourage. The king surely wouldn’t be too concerned if a servant ran an errand home, with the intention to come back.

And hadn’t the king given him Feiny outright? Better if they could have used Paisi’s horse, who was coated for the weather, but they had all Feiny’s gear, and had him warm, and assured him being fed, and if Gran’s luck was moving Paisi home—he just had to hold out.

He stopped dead on that thought, stopped so long that his boot soles scorched and stung. He imagined the moment he would face his father. “Sire,” he would say, “Paisi went home to see to Gran.” That was certainly the truth.

But then, inevitably: “Why?” his father would ask.

And what could he say? They were all Quinalts here, except the queen, who had no reason to love him because he was the king’s bastard, whose presence here had to be an embarrassment to the family; and it was the Festival, when everybody was confessing sins and being particularly holy—

And what could he say to excuse his actions? Gran sent us a dream? Or: because we dreamed the same dream, Paisi had to go?

They hadn’t quite thought that part through. Thinking of Gran, it seemed so natural and reasonable, what they did, even the unnatural run of luck that had guided them, and guided Paisi. But the moment he thought of explaining his reasoning to his father, things appeared in a Quinalt, Guelenish light, and it was neither natural nor reasonable, as Quinalt priests would look at it. It was a Sending that had called out in their dreams. It was witchcraft, pure and simple, which was the same as wizardry: Gran was a witch, and he the son not just of a witch, but of an Amefin sorceress—he was the lasting embarrassment of his father, who never should have slept with such a woman.

So above all, he couldn’t just confess about the dream—his father might understand, but the moment it got to a servant’s ears, there was no telling where the news would go next or how it would take new shape. He could plead for understanding, that he never had had any sorcery about him, not once in his life, nor wanted any, and he could say that Gran must be desperate to have Sent that dream. He could hope that his father, who had known Lord Tristen himself, would look on the matter with complete sympathy— and overlook the horse, and Paisi’s going off. They had been lucky about their misdeed. He might argue they had been under a compulsion—he knew from Paisi’s stories and Gran’s that sometimes, when wizardry or magic was working, things couldn’t be helped falling into place, and even people who ordinarily didn’t have a smidge of wizardry might just go along with things, cooperating more slowly than some, but move they might, not thinking as clearly as they might.

And now the stableboy might be beaten, and the priests might get wind of his having heard Gran and remember, if they had ever forgotten, who the king’s bastard’s mother was. And he still had to ask Aewyn about the red coat, and ask if that was right, and now it was all tangled together. He couldn’t lie to Aewyn and ask for his help at the same time.

Luck, when it ran so strongly and so suddenly, could be bad luck as well as good: it could be sorcery as well as wizardry. It could even be magic, which he didn’t understand, except that it was Sihhë-born, Sihhë-made, and sometimes inherent in things, and a foolish boy could pick up something with magic about it and have very little choice or sense about what he did next. He might not be making it up about a compulsion.

He hadn’t acquired anything he could blame for his folly, had he; and he had assumed the dream had come from Gran…

That was the problem. He and Paisi had assumed it came from Gran, when his mother sat there in Henas’amef in her tower, silent through all his life.

But his mother’s son had been called away to his father’s palace, and his mother hated his father, did she not? She hated him beyond all measure, and all the magic that bound her to her tower prison had kept her spells inside. They had never been able to get out. Gran said they couldn’t: Gran said that it wasn’t her witch-work that kept his mother in her prison, but Lord Tristen himself, with magic no wizard or sorcerer could bend, let alone break.

That was what Gran had assured him when, after the earliest visit to his mother he could remember, he had had nightmares, terrible nightmares of her breaking out of her prison and turning up outside their window, in the dark.

She could not get out, Gran had assured him. “Not her nor her wishes, neither.”

And was that not still true?

If his mother found out he had gone to his father, and if she grew very, very angry… who knew what strength she might find?

It became more and more urgent to tell his father, and to get an older, wiser head to work on the matter. Aewyn would, he had said it to Paisi, likely sleep until noon. And maybe he didn’t even want to see Aewyn yet. He had to find the right time to tell his father and make sure no one heard… not easy, to gain a completely private audience with the king of all Ylesuin, but he had to try. And meanwhile if bad luck started showering around him, he would know it was his mother; and if good, then he would be more hopeful that it was Gran’s work: that was one clue he might have to the origin of it.

The best thing to do, in any event, was take care to have a clear head and a calm heart, to tell the truth where it did good, and to say nothing to anyone at all until he could reach the king.

First was to satisfy the hunger pangs and settle himself to live alone. Paisi might be on the road with their breakfast, but there was a pitcher of drinking water in the bedchamber, and Paisi had left behind the food they had in the room for simple moments of hunger. There was a stale end of bread from two days ago, though the sausage he had thought was there, was not. There was the fireplace poker, in the absence of a toasting stick.

He wiped down the poker, skewered a stale bit of bread, showering crumbs on the hearth. The toasted bread revived itself, there was indeed water in the pitcher, and it made a fine, even homey breakfast, making his thoughts happier, for the moment. He was warm and dry, he had found his breakfast, and ill seemed at least a little further removed from the day’s doings. Afterward he sat waiting, holding on to the three-coin luck piece that Gran had blessed and watching the snow come past the windows.

Paisi must be beyond Guelemara’s farms soon. He would be chatting with the merchant as they went, finding out all the gossip—Paisi was good at that—and tonight Paisi would be warm and safe by a fire, helping with the mules. Feiny would be warm and safe, too, with other creatures about, if he would only get along with the mules.

And when Paisi did get home, he would see that Gran had what she needed, and cook her meals, and renew the indoor wood stack, just about in time for the Bryalt festival to start, with its dances and its feasts and all the merriment in town. Paisi deserved that. Lord Crissand was a kind lord, who would understand perfectly well why Paisi would have come home, and he would, by the king’s own order, see that Gran had everything she needed before Paisi rode back again.

He could, perhaps, tell his father that Paisi had been so homesick for the Bryalt holidays he had sent him home. That would save him having to admit to the dream.

He could say that Paisi and he both had grown very worried for Gran, considering the storms this last several weeks, and that they had not been sure they had left enough wood, and they had not wanted to bother the king or have soldiers going out to do what they should have done in the first place: the first was almost the truth, and the second fact was that Gran would never tell the truth to soldiers. Paisi was right. She would meet them at the door and say there was nothing she needed, no matter what.

Blaming it all on their worry about the weather might be a very good lie, maybe even a white lie, since it would protect everyone from blame and even save the king his father from having the priests all in a flutter. It wasn’t that bad a lie.

And Paisi had only come along with him to Guelemara in the first place to take care of him, and he had never been forbidden to send Paisi back— because no one ever thought he would be sending Paisi anywhere else, he was sure, but it was so. The horse, now, being his—he could argue that he thought the horse was his to send, though it was unlikely his father meant him to keep so fine a creature when he did go home again.

At least, he said to himself, at least if his father was angry, the anger would not fall on Gran’s head or Paisi’s: it was his own at risk.

And, while truth was at issue, he would learn essential truths about his father when the first truth came out. He would discover, for one thing, whether his father would forgive him as readily as he forgave Aewyn, and laugh—Aewyn had always said that their father wouldn’t be annoyed at this or that thing, and Aewyn defied the rules with blithe unconcern. All he wanted for himself was one grace for one solitary misbehavior. It seemed within reason… if the king really did care what became of him.

All those years that the king had stopped to talk to Gran—he had always taken for granted that it was about him; and then he had begun to believe it was concern for his welfare. The annual gifts had persuaded him so.

But had the conversation really been regarding him?

His father had other concerns in Amefel: the cold light of day had made him reckon that into the balance. His father might have been stopping to ask Gran about his mother, not about him.

If that were so—maybe he would have far less patience with his misdeed.

Well, there was the truth to learn. At worst, his father would send him home and never want to see him again. But at least he would have done the right thing by Gran, and he would not have built up fond hopes about his estate in life, hopes which, if followed too far, could do greater harm to him and Gran and Paisi than he could manage now. Maybe he was meant to be a goatherd, or maybe learn Gran’s craft, if he had a smidge of his mother’s talent. He was never a wicked person. It was a choice, was it not, whether to turn wizardry to sorcery? It wasn’t a taint born into him, was it?

And if his father turned out not to want him here, then he could only make things worse for himself and Aewyn and everyone by staying too long. If his father cast him out, there was still a hope that someday Aewyn would come visit him… there was their friendship, which above all else he wanted not to betray. And he didn’t think he had.

He almost wished he had gone with Paisi, back to his life in the country, where he could help Paisi on the farm and live a quiet life in a place he loved until the king and Aewyn rode by again. That was no bad fate.

Well, and if that was all done and gone—it never had been much. And if not, and his father did forgive him as freely as he would forgive Aewyn, on whom he clearly doted—well, then he’d know Gran’s extravagant hopes , for his fortunes were justified, and he could trust a little more to that fragile ice.

If his father did forgive him, then he would give his father what a good father might hope to win from him… like trust. And love.

He would so very much like to love his father. He had come here hoping to find his fortune, to be given something to do, or be, and so far he had found that it was Aewyn who had bidden him, to give him friendship—not inconsiderable at all, by no measure insignificant, but not altogether what he had come hoping for.

If he found a father who could love him, that he could love in return, and trust…

Oh, it was a giddy, soaring hope. And he had just done everything a fool could do to make things go wrong, had he not? He deceived, and stole, and lied.

So here he sat on the very hinge point of his life, gifted with his new clothes he was now afraid to question with Aewyn; with new obligations— and overwhelmed with the possibilities—and having a secret he had to keep for at least a day.

Maybe, he thought, after he put on his best show of manners in the Quinaltine on Fast Day, maybe after he proved he could do well and be dutiful, that would be the best time to tell his father what he had done.

If he could keep the secret from spilling out of the courtyard and the stables.

From now on he must make no more mistakes, none at all. He had been Otter all his life, and that was a safe name. The one he was born with— Elfwyn—he knew was an enemy’s name, a king’s name, the one the Marhanen kings of Ylesuin had betrayed and murdered. If only his mother had given him a name out of her own Aswydd house—a name like Heryn, even, her brother who was hanged—that would have been bad enough for his fortunes. But she had named him after a remote relative only she claimed, the last of the Sihhë kings and the source of her abrogated rights and titles as well as the Gift she had. The name had insulted his father, whose house had succeeded the Sihhë kings, it had threatened Lord Crissand, who had gained her titles, and it had outraged the Quinalt priests. It had been a wicked stroke on her part: it was clever, and it made everyone around her as uncomfortable as possible: that meant his mother was happy.

Gran had stepped in, then, and called him Otter, a country name, from a countrywoman, and it had served him all his life. But it wasn’t a city name, or a name to go about with, and among the hopes he had had in coming to Guelemara, he had hoped his father would give him a new name, a Guelen name, one the Quinalt priests would accept, one he could wear in public, and stop people whispering about him.

“There’s the king’s son,” they would say, if he had a Guelenish name like Gwieden or even Wynsan or Feisun, which every third person in town seemed to be called. He would settle for Wynsan, not—“There’s the witch’s brat.”

He didn’t know what he was going to be once he went into the sanctuary of the Quinaltine with the rest of the family. Probably nobody else had thought of it, yet. There was a book there, that the priests wrote names in, when a person was blessed and sealed, whatever that meant. But if they wrote him in the Quinaltine book, what would they write? Otter from Amefel? Not next to Aewyn Marhanen. His father would find it entirely uncomfortable to have a son named Elfwyn or Aswydd, would he not, and he was both, and those fine clothes were trying to say Marhanen—if he was meant to have them.

Oh, he wished he had gone with Paisi when he’d had the chance. He still sat waiting, waiting to gain what Gran had always told him was his fortune… and dreading some shout in the hallways: The Amefin brat’s stolen a horse and lied to the gate wardens…

Why, oh, why had he stayed? He had settled into certain appurtenances of this princely life: Aewyn’s comradeship above all; and books, as many as he liked; and bread with no mill sand in it; spiced foods; clean sheets and warm fires and glass windows—all these wonderful things he still looked on with wonder and yet could not imagine now being without. The priests always said wealth could never make anyone happy: but it seemed to him, where he sat, that these things were a reason for great contentment, if he could continue here.

Wealth, and a righteous name that Guelenfolk could say without blanching, if he could only attain it, could do one other thing for them. If he gained a name he could wear comfortably among Guelenfolk, and be in the king’s house, and if he had gold, then he could help Gran and Paisi, and provide for them handsomely to the end of their days. Paisi should not be his servant. Paisi was Gran’s true grandson, was what, when he himself had had no right to a place under Gran’s roof until Lord Tristen had asked Gran to take him in and keep him away from his mother. Paisi’s real place in the world was to take care of his gran, not him, and to inherit her farm someday, and to have a fine herd of goats and another of pigs and enough money to hire a helper. Paisi could be a substantial man, with property.

His wealth was their answer. He would get through this. He would do all he could to send Paisi home for good. He would find his own way in this strange place, after making peace with his father. He might be terribly lonely, then, bereft of the family and life he knew.

But there was Aewyn. His absent brother. His friend. His model of what it could be, to be King Cefwyn’s son.

At the moment he dreaded going to Aewyn: he was by no means sure Aewyn would not immediately see that something was wrong, and if Aewyn got the truth out of him too soon, he might take offense at not being told from the start—gods, he was supposed to be helping Aewyn with the apples this morning, and he hadn’t, and now Aewyn was going to ask questions for sure, where he’d been, what he’d done—

Aewyn might be angry with him, and might tell his father, and the soldiers might catch Paisi before he had reached the first way stop.

That was no good. He’d let Aewyn get worried about him, that was the way. He’d tell Aewyn he’d been hiding out and confess the whole truth right after services tomorrow. By then Paisi would be much too far to catch, and Aewyn would have to feel sympathy for him. Likely the clothes were exactly what he was supposed to have, and he would just have to show up for services and not say anything to Aewyn before tomorrow morning.

It was dangerous. Aewyn did have a temper. But that way, if his father did let fly, Aewyn would intercede for him until he had the story, and he could talk his way past Aewyn, after it was too late for a report to do anything to catch Paisi or thwart that—Aewyn might be angry, but he would not likely want to have him sent home, and knowing his father that much better, and being able to say things a bastard son wouldn’t dare say in his own defense, Aewyn could talk his way out of trouble for him—it was going to be unpleasant, but if he knew Aewyn, and he thought he did, the storm would blow over, if he just didn’t have to lie to Aewyn beforehand.

So long as he didn’t lie, everything would be patched up and cobbled together. And Gran’s gifts—those would go on. She needed them.

He’d once thought Lord Crissand was the sole source of the good things that came to them in their cottage, and that of course lords naturally gifted old peasant women with goats and hay and good blankets. When he had learned a few years ago that it was his father the king behind it all—his father the king, and, long ago, Tristen Sihhë—

Surely, whatever else happened in Guelemara, those gifts might continue.

Oh, he wished he knew what to do.

Maybe, please the gods, it was Gran’s Sending that had reached out to him, and he had done the right thing. Gods forfend it should be his mother’s.

Act on a piece of wizardry, cooperate with it ever so little—and it spread and developed branches.

Wasn’t that what Gran had always warned him?

vii

AFTERNOON CAME, AND WITH AFTERNOON, A PATCH OF BLUE SPREAD IN THE sky, while the snow had stopped for the last hour. Whatever Aewyn had done about the stables, Otter was sure Aewyn had done by now, and he might be angry, staying in his room, waiting for him to come and apologize.

He would have to wait. Otter put away the strayed items about the room, dined on more toast and water, while thus far, so far as he could guess, the question of a missing horse and a servant’s mission somehow had not gone beyond the courtyard, nobody had mentioned it to Aewyn, and Aewyn had not come to his room, which meant, probably, that Aewyn was put out with him.

But there was still the likelihood of the stablemaster asking, when Feiny never came back. As the afternoon lengthened, worry wore a deeper spot in his imagination. Otter finally gathered his courage and decided he should go down to the yard to head off questions and prevent any difficulties from reaching the inner halls and complicating matters with Aewyn and his father.

He put on his better brown cloak, to look as much like his father’s son as he could, and walked down the hall, this time to the central stairs, keeping a slightly worried eye out for Aewyn or his bodyguard. He saw no one, which indicated Aewyn was somewhere other than his rooms. He went down to the main hall and so on to the stable-court door. Past soldiers busy with their own concerns, he walked out into the crisp air and sunlight of the courtyard, and, descending the steps at an idle stroll, he walked through the yard.

“Your lordship.”

He looked aside. The stablemaster had seen him, and diverted onto his track straightway with the air of a man bent on business.

His heart beat hard. “Sir,” he said respectfully and as innocently as he could manage. The stablemaster had the look of an old soldier, weathered and white-mustached, with no nonsense about him, and Otter’s every desire was to bow and look at the ground—but he had known, coming down there, that he might be caught and might have to try out his story on the stablemaster or the gate warden or worse.

“The boy says ye went out by dawn an’ took Feiny out.”

“I did, sir,” he said, light-headed with fright. “Paisi had to go home.” The story started to change its order, and its pieces, coming hind end first into the world. “Our gran’s taken ill. He had to go, and with the drifts and all, we couldn’t get down to the pasture. So I sent him on Feiny, with grain enough, and cover from the weather. He’ll be back, Paisi will. With Feiny safe and sound.”

The stablemaster’s brows drew together like a gathering cloud, and the frown deepened. “It’s a hard ride, at best. And that man o’ yours ain’t up to that horse, your lordship, forgive me. The boy’s a fool that didn’t ask what you was about. If we’d ha’ knowt, we’d ha’ provided a gentler horse.”

There it was. The boy had the blame and might take harm for it, and in the face of such bluff goodwill from the old stablemaster, he lost all resolve. He could scarcely track the story that had fallen out of his mouth already.

“It was my fault,” he said. “It was my fault, Master Kei. But Paisi is much better than I am on a horse. And he’s traveling with merchants.”

“Ha,” the stablemaster grunted, eyebrows lifting at that comforting news. “A message come, was it?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. The lie fell out of his mouth and took solid form. “From Amefel.”

“An’ this messenger, did he ride back wi’ your man, wi’ no change of horse?”

“Yes, sir.” It was the quickest way he could think of to dispose of any messenger, to have him go away with Paisi, and be with him, and keeping Feiny safe. “And he’ll be back as soon as he can.”

“Aye, your lordship.” The stablemaster let him go with a doubtful look, and Otter took the chance to escape, knowing that he had not done well. Now his tale had added a message, a messenger who hadn’t stopped to care for his horse in the Guelesfort stable yard, and no word how the message had gotten upstairs to him without passing the guards who watched everyone come in and out. He hadn’t thought about such details until the words were out of his mouth, and now the lie had more pieces. Which pieces ultimately couldn’t fit. And before too long the gate warden and the stablemaster might have a cup of ale with the Guard officers, and it was all going to break loose before he could talk to his father or Aewyn.

He didn’t know what to do, now, except to go on holding to the lie long enough to let Paisi get as far as possible, because if his father turned out to be angry, he could arrest Paisi, who might try to run, and the gods knew what could happen to him.

Toast and water had worn thin, by now, so very thin that his stomach hurt.

Fast Day was tomorrow, when he had to go without food or drink all day long, and when he would have to face his father and Aewyn and confess everything: he didn’t know if he could face it on bread and water. And he was near the kitchens, where he might not have too many chances to come today. Getting food was Paisi’s chore, but now Otter had to do it if he was to have any food at all; and he had to get himself ready in the morning, and not oversleep, not if he had to sit up all night. If his argument for sending Paisi away was that he was so sure he could manage without him, he had to do for himself and prove it.

So he turned toward the kitchens and climbed that short stair by the scullery, into a hall lit by a steamy little glass window, then into the huge arch of the kitchen.

The air inside was thick with steam and smoke, with the smells of wood fire and bread baking, the bubbling of meats and pies and cabbage, every sort of food one could imagine. A thick-armed maid spied him and fluttered him away from a floury counter edge, crying, “Oh, young lord, ye’ll have flour on your fine cloak, there. What would be your need?”

“Bread,” he said, relieved it became so easy. “Brown bread. Cheese and sausage, if you will.”

“Aye, your lordship. Don’t touch nothing, pray. Ye’ll get all floury. Stand there an’ I’ll fetch it. Is one loaf enough?”

“One black, one brown,” he said, giddy to find things suddenly falling his way and hoping it was an omen of Gran’s Gift taking care of him again. He stood in the rush and hurry of the kitchen, avoiding floury and greasy edges for the few moments until the maid came back, bringing him a small basket with a round loaf of crusty dark bread, a long one of brown, a small sausage, and what was likely the cheese wrapped up in oily cloth. “Thank you,” he said fervently, taking his leave, and edged his way back into the little hall and on up to the servants’ stairs, which led to the main floor.

He was just setting foot on the first step up that grand stairway when someone hailed him from behind, and not just any voice.

“Nephew?”

He turned back reluctantly, holding the silly basket, caught, plainly caught. The Prince, his father’s brother, who held his offices in the lower hall, had come out to overtake him and clearly meant business.

“Come,” Efanor said. “Can you spare a moment?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He had never spoken two words to this man in all his time here, nor had Efanor ever addressed him. He caught his breath and tried to gather his wits as he made a little bow and followed Prince Efanor back to his writing room, a narrow, book-laden venue he had never entered. Books balanced crazily on the counter, and several, open, overlay the writing desk, sharing the surface with an inkpot and a quill left in it, writing interrupted. The Prince had chased him down on the instant, hunted him to the foot of the stairs, and all he could think was that a report had come in. The gate wardens must have reported to the Guard, and Prince Efanor had heard about it—which was the worst thing he could imagine. Efanor, who went habitually in black, and wore a silver Quinalt sigil as if he were a priest, was always so solemn and royal—Efanor advised Otter’s father, and judged cases, and handled the accounts, besides. He was as good as a priest, to Otter’s eye, a priest with the very strictest notions of truth and proper doings; and all he could think of now was to confess—to confess every lie, every sin he’d committed or thought of committing before this man could ever accuse him of his misdeeds, and maybe—maybe, because Aewyn had told him Efanor was not in fact as strict as he looked—to find some absolution, some penance, some way to mollify this man before he went to the king.

“Sit down,” Efanor bade him, and as he was about to sit down, whisked the basket from his hand. “Food for tonight?”

“Yes, sir.” He sat, and Efanor set the damning basket on the edge of the writing desk, behind which Efanor took his seat.

“You’re of the Bryalt faith.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He wished he could sink through the stones of the floor, right on the spot.

“Are you a good Bryaltine?”

“I don’t know, Your Highness. Not as good as I could be.”

“Have you ever attended a Quinalt Festival?”

“No, Your Highness.”

“This is not Henas’amef, and the Quinalt holiday is not a time for frivolity of any sort.”

“Yes, Your Highness. No, Your Highness.”

“Nor a time for leading your younger brother into mischief.”

He was completely taken aback.

“I hope I have never—”

“Not yet. But boys being what they are, and two boys being twice one, it seems worth mentioning in advance of a public occasion.”

“I would never—”

“No, being a clever Otter and hard to catch, you would not. Your half brother is less cautious.” Efanor waved a hand toward the ridiculous basket. “Palace manners, however—you have a servant. You are not in the country. Let him carry such things. People note such behaviors as out of the ordinary, and they gossip. People will all too readily note you as out of the ordinary, and gossip about every little item that suggests oddity or scandal. Give them nothing. Be as unremarkable as possible, and be very wary about entraining your half brother in any schemes in public view or out of it. You have none such in mind, I hope.”

“No, sir,” he said faintly, desperately, and knew that he had lied, simply by failing to confess the truth, twice in the same hour. Was not three wizardous, and binding, if wizardry was possibly in question?

“Keep your chin up. Look all men in the eye. You are my nephew, in whatever degree, and my brother’s son. What is that hanging about your neck?”

His heart skipped a beat. He clutched the object in question. “A luck piece, Your Grace. My gran gave it to me.”

Efanor silently held out his hand.

He didn’t want to give it up. It was his luck. It was his tie with home and Gran. But he reluctantly fished it out of his collar and past the fastening of his cloak, and lifted the leather cord over his head.

Efanor took it, and looked cursorily at it as he laid the cluster of cord-bound pennies on his desk. “The queen herself is Bryalt, to be sure, but your gran’s form of the Bryalt faith verges just a wee bit closely on hedge-magic. You do know that.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” It was no more than a whisper he managed.

“You have been exemplary. I know. You are my brother’s, the result of one night’s youthful indiscretion. You carry Aswydd blood. You are taught by witchery—all these are matters marginally acceptable in Amefel, but I need not warn you, they are anathema in Guelessar. Yet my brother wishes to do you justice, so far as he can, and my nephew has taken to you and become your companion, so far as he can; and this places you under certain constraints of behavior—do you follow me?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“You will be under close public observation. No one can foresee how grievous might be the outcome if you were to be seen to violate propriety in services in the least degree. Do not fidget, do not cough, do not sneeze—and do not above all be seen to wear any charm, particularly to services, particularly within the premises of the Quinaltine.”

“Yes, Your Highness. It’s only a keepsake.”

Efanor gathered up the charm Gran had given him and gave it back to him.

“Tuck it away and do not wear it publicly until the day you cross back into Amefel. There is virtue in the piece, and that will not do, that will not do at all, inside the sanctuary. Most of the clergy is dull as stones, but there are reasons. Trust me in this.”

“Yes, sir,” Otter managed to say, and clenched it fast. Virtue? Could his uncle possibly feel witchery in it?

Efanor asked him, “Do you truly believe as the Bryaltines believe?”

“I studied writing with the brothers.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I don’t truly know what the Bryaltines believe, Your Highness. I never had the catechism.”

“Indeed. Does the Quinalt service frighten you?”

“I heard—I heard somewhere, Your Highness, that they curse the Bryaltines. That scares me.”

A sigh. “An obscure part of the service. A nuisanceful point we oppose, but—” A shrug and a shake of his head. “Be patient with us Guelenfolk. The queen herself endures it. The liturgy is under review… under close review, considering the succession.”

Considering the succession. What did that possibly mean?

Then he thought of Aewyn and Aemaryen, whose mother was Bryaltine, and one of whom would grow up Bryaltine.

“Your quiet acceptance, like the queen’s, will be noted. Your presence with the family will disturb some folk, but, more important, it will reassure others that you can enter under that roof without fear. Your quiet, respectful attendance, your observance of Quinalt forms, will answer important questions and provide your father with answers to questions.”

“Questions, Your Highness?”

“About your mother’s influence.”

His cheeks flamed hot.

“Take no shame in my saying so,” Efanor added gently. “That influence may pose critical questions in certain minds, but not among us who understand the circumstances. Certainly your birth was none of your choosing. We hope to have a quiet, a decorous service. Servants do gossip. Be scrupulously observant. I see you are stocking up on food.”

The blush surely grew worse.

“You know you must consume all this food tonight,” Efanor said, “or cast it out before sunrise, to have no sustenance nor drink in your room… if you are observant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rise before dawn. Dress in the clothes provided you. I trust they do fit.”

“I’m sure, sir.” He was no such thing. He had had no time to try them. And he was too distressed to ask if what was provided him was proper. The very last thing he wanted was His Highness inspecting them in his room and finding Paisi gone.

“Join us in the lower hall just before dawn,” Efanor said. “Join the processional with the family. Sit with us, walk and sit in order just behind me, not next to Aewyn, and do not exchange glances with anyone. Have a pleasant look, however. A smile is not in order during the processional into the sanctuary, but you are permitted to smile after services, when you walk out in view of the city. Do you think you can observe all that?”

He attempted a smile, uncertainly, obediently, and, he feared, unsuccessfully. “I can, Your Highness.”

“Leaving the Quinaltine by daylight, one may smile. Smile, and never frown; but laughter—laughter should occur only when you are back well within the Guelesfort gates, no matter what your half brother provokes. This is a very grave matter: I cannot say that strongly enough. Mind, if any priest or His Holiness speaks to you directly within the sanctuary, look down when spoken to and answer him modestly and clearly. Especially try not to frown at any particular people. One notes you do this at times.”

“I never intended so, Your Highness.”

“Thinking, perhaps? A lad of deep thoughts?”

Another blush. “I never meant to offend anyone.”

“Well, let me see your cheerful face again.”

He tried. He tried with all his heart, then he thought it was the third lie, and the smile died a sudden death.

“Good lad,” Efanor said somberly, and gave him back his basket, a dismissal. “Don’t take this meeting as a rebuke. Take it for concern. I am concerned, young Otter, as a close kinsman.”

He felt a sudden urge to confess everything, to pour out all his sins to this man—it seemed for that one moment that he might make Efanor understand everything that had happened. But he hardly knew this priestly elder prince. He had always found Efanor a cipher, a stiff and formal sort servants skipped to obey and facing whom soldiers snapped to attention, even if he was notoriously holy and very scholarly.

“Your Highness,” he said instead, and stood up, with the silly basket in his hands.

“I’m told you read quite well.”

“Yes, Your Highness, I hope I do.”

Efanor handed him a little roll of parchment, tied up with brown cord. “This will explain in some detail the days of the Festival, what you should do on each particular day, and when you should rise and sit and expect to depart services.”

He took the little scroll and tucked it, along with the charm, into his bosom. “Thank you. Thank you very much, Your Highness.”

“And you won’t really need all that bread,” Efanor said. “My royal brother is hosting the family tonight in his chambers. It’s a custom we have. Your man will dine with the royal servants, where one trusts he will remain sober. Wear your second-best for the occasion. And appear at sunset.”

“Your Highness.” He hardly had breath left in him. And Efanor clearly had no idea Paisi was gone.

He bowed. Efanor favored him with a small smile, and stood up, and offered him the door.

He bowed again. He went out into the hall, on his own with the basket, and with the instructions, and with his charm, and his lengthening chain of fabrications, and went back toward the stairs.

He had lied the third time. Everything had, on the surface, gone well and smoothly. He had only to wear his second-best clothes and have supper with his father, and smile at the right times and not the wrong ones when they went in public. But his heart kicked like a hare in a trap. Was it tonight, not tomorrow, that he should tell his father the truth?

It had no certain feeling, the way his luck ran now.

Paisi, oh, Paisi, he thought. Be careful. Be ever so careful.

It might still be my mother’s working.

viii

IF PAISI HAD BEEN WITH HIM AS SUNDOWN CAME, HE WOULD HAVE LAID OUT all the right clothes for the dinner. He would have called for a bath well in advance and had the house servants carry the water up, and Otter and Paisi would have dressed in good order. But Paisi was somewhere on the road south now, perhaps approaching some village, or at very least one of the windbreak shelters they had used on their way, with a good stone wall for protection and a place for lawful fires.

So as the day dimmed in the windows, Otter did as Paisi would have done and laid his second-best out on the bed. He had no idea how to get a bath, which required informing someone: he had no idea who that person was.

He did know the source of drinking water, however, down by the inner well, where the whole Guelesfort got its water from a spring unstoppable by drought or hostile attack. It was cold as old sin when it came out, that was what Paisi had said, and miserable for washing, but it would serve in present circumstances. Otter carried it upstairs in the drinking pitcher, and none of the servants, lowest of the low, asked him his business.

He warmed a little water in the fireplace, for which wood was running somewhat low, and he used the washing basin for a bath, there on the warm hearthstones. He took pains with his appearance as he dressed, and found himself, as far as he could tell, acceptable. He had put the basket of food by the hearthside, to burn before morning, as Efanor’s little scroll informed him he should do. He had put the amulet in the clothespress in one of his gloves, where it would rest, safe from prying servants and accidents.

And he had on his fine dark brown, modest and plain, but very, very kind to clean skin. He thought he must look very fine, not as showy as he was sure Aewyn would appear tonight, let alone their father and the queen. But he was ready. His hair was combed. His linen was spotless. He hoped he would find the courage he needed. He hoped Aewyn was speaking to him and that he could signal the need to talk to him in private, when he could make peace.

He had been alone since dawn, and trembled at the thought of trying to confess his sins tonight, at least to Aewyn, as quietly as he could, and maybe, if he could possibly catch the king in private and without servants or guards—maybe he should just take the chance instead of waiting until tomorrow.

Tonight was sure—well, almost sure. Tomorrow—he had no notion whether he would have a chance then, either: it was only Aewyn and his mother, so far as he knew, who could get to him completely in private.

But there was still Aewyn to face. And that came first.

He left his rooms at the very edge of dusk and went down the hall and across the landing of the grand stairs, a long walk to the opposite wing that the royal apartments occupied. The guards here all knew him, and ignored him as someone who had leave to come and go, and the fact that the guards were still at Aewyn’s door informed him that Aewyn had not yet gone to his father’s chambers. He saw that with a sudden rush of hope.

The guards had to announce him: they did that when he simply appeared at the door and waited, and it was no delay at all before they let him in.

“There you are!” Aewyn said with a frown. “Where have you been?”

“I—” he began, then lost the thread of everything.

“I tried to find you early this morning, and I couldn’t, so I took a sack of apples from the kitchen storeroom, and I took them down and paid the stableboy to lay them out tomorrow. Then the tailor showed up, and Master Armorer, and that was hours of standing.” Aewyn’s face grew worried, then, reflecting his. “Is something wrong? Where have you been all day?”

Otter lowered his voice to its faintest. “In my rooms. I had to send Paisi home, on my horse.”

“Why?” Aewyn asked, hardly lowering his voice at all, then seized him by the arm and led him over near the tall diamond windows where there was a modicum of privacy from the servants. “Why? What happened?”

How did he know about Gran? That was the burning question. And he chose not to lie—but not to tell everything until Aewyn thought to ask him.

“Gran’s taken ill. And we didn’t count on the storms being so bad and there might not be enough wood small enough for her to carry, and sometimes the shed door freezes up with ice, so you have to take an axe to get the ice clear.”

“So Paisi left, and you helped him?” Aewyn’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t see you down at the stable when I was there.”

“We were out before it was more than half-light, and I rode and Paisi walked as far as the gate. We found merchants for him to travel with, so he’s safe. But I had to lie to the gate wardens up and down, and then the stablemaster’s boy, and then to your uncle…”

“To Uncle Efanor? How did he get into it?”

“He stopped me in the hall to tell me how to behave in Festival, and to tell me to come to dinner tonight.”

“But you’re completely by yourself now! Who helped you?”

“I had a bath, and I always dressed myself. And I had already gotten food for supper, except His Highness said I was to come to dinner.”

“Well, but you’re all alone! You can’t be by yourself. Come stay with me tonight!”

“I can’t. They’ll know, and they could still catch Paisi if they know too soon.” He hadn’t made up his mind, but all of a sudden what he told Paisi he would do seemed the best course. “I have to pretend he’s still here at least until tomorrow; then they won’t bother to chase him.”

“You think they would chase him?”

There was the hardest part, the part he hoped would get by. “We aren’t supposed to know about Gran, and we do, by a way that we’re not supposed to, and if we weren’t supposed to know, then we weren’t supposed to go, either, were we?”

“How did you know?” Aewyn asked, and Otter took a deep breath and told the truth:

“Dreams. We both had the same dream, and Gran can Send a dream if she has to. She needs us. And Paisi had to go, and we can’t take a chance of Paisi getting caught. He has to get through.”

“But he is coming back, isn’t he?”

“He will, as soon as he can. It’s three days to get there. Longer, with the weather. And he won’t try to come back until it’s safe on the roads. I told him not to try. But I’ll tell His Majesty tomorrow, after Fast Day, after Paisi’s had time enough to get clear away. And I’ll do my best to explain everything. I hope His Majesty may forgive me.”

“He won’t be angry.”

“I hope he won’t be. I was so scared your uncle knew—”

“Well, but he doesn’t, then, does he?” Aewyn loved plots above all things: his eyes sparkled. “And if you don’t have anybody to do for you, well, I can send you gifts, can’t I?”

“Can you send a whole bath?”

Aewyn laughed. “I can! I shall! And with the family dinner tonight, you won’t starve.”

“So. See?” He feigned complete confidence. “It’s all perfectly fine. And I’ll confess what I did, when I have to. But maybe nobody will ever notice Paisi isn’t here!”

Aewyn’s eyes fairly danced. “How did you get away with the horse?”

“I asked the stableboy to saddle him.”

“And just took him out?”

“Paisi got breakfast from the kitchen, and I got Feiny out. We rode down to the gate before anybody was much on the streets, found some merchants who wanted a guard, and there we were. They promised to feed Paisi and Feiny both until they reach the crossing. And I sent Feiny out in all his gear, so he’ll be warm enough, especially with the traders’ mules and enough to eat.”

“That’s clever!”

“And I still have Paisi’s horse, if I need him.”

“He’s a piebald.”

“He has all his legs, last I saw.”

Aewyn laughed. “Well, he can’t keep up with mine. We’ll tell Papa what’s happened and get you another horse.”

“I can’t feed the one I have!”

Aewyn took on a quizzical expression. “The boy will feed him. He always does.”

“But at Gran’s… Gran can’t feed a horse. We’ll have to give Feiny and Tammis back when I go home for good and all.”

“You’re not going home!”

“I don’t know. I suppose that depends on whether your father sends me home for stealing Feiny.”

“He won’t! You’ll be here forever.”

Aewyn clearly had his mind made up on the point, and it was good to hear, but equally clearly, it was only Aewyn’s opinion, not the king’s.

“I hope to be here,” Otter said. He wasn’t sure about wanting it through spring planting, when Gran needed him, and once he’d said it the very ground under him felt shaky, as if nothing before him was the same as before. “I don’t know where I’ll be once the king finds out.”

“I’ll go with you to tell him.”

“After Fast Day. To give Paisi time enough. If soldiers came after him, I don’t know what he might do.”

“After Fast Day,” Aewyn said. “So we should go to dinner now. And we’ll have our secret.”

ix

OTTER HAD ONLY ONCE STOOD IN THE KING’S PRIVATE CHAMBERS, AND HAD NO idea where he was to go, beyond the little room he knew, but Aewyn knew the way to the inner halls, quite confidently. He marched them past all the guards, all the servants, arm in arm, at the last, a terrifying lack of manners, right into the room set for family dining.

The king was there, and they disentangled themselves and bowed respectfully and properly—bowed, likewise to the queen, Ninévrisë. Aewyn came to her for a kiss on the cheek.

“Mama,” he said, and returned her embrace.

Then Ninévrisë reached out a hand toward Otter, too, beckoning insistently. “Come,” she said, “come here, young man.”

Otter advanced ever so cautiously, his heart thumping. His vision was all of white and gold, beautiful furnishings, beautiful table, beautiful pale blue gown and a nearer and nearer vision of dark hair and a golden circlet, with the most luminous violet eyes gazing right at his. He was caught, snared, drawn forward, constrained to offer a hand, and to touch and be touched.

“Welcome,” the queen said, when he bowed and looked up. “Welcome, Otter.”

They said the queen had been with his mother the hour he was born. They said the queen had held him in her arms. He had never been able to grasp it for the truth—that she could be so kind to her husband’s bastard. He was utterly dismayed when she drew him forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek, in the way gentlefolk kinsmen did.

“Your Majesty,” he murmured. She was that. She was a reigning queen in all but name, in her own kingdom of Elwynor. And wizardry and witchery were not at all dead in Elwynor: her title, Regent of Elwynor, held place for the return of a Sihhë king. The Gift, Gran had told him, ran as strong in that line as it did through the Aswydds. He felt it tingle through her fingers, through the touch of her lips, so potent for the instant that it sparked through his bones and left him addle-witted and dazed, staring at her.

“Come, oh, come,” Aewyn said impatiently, dragging him by the arm, past Prince Efanor, and past the king himself, to claim a seat beside him at table, standing. They were only Aewyn, and Efanor, and the king and queen, and it was impossible to think only five people could eat at that great table, with all those plates and cups. There was holiday greenery, just as Aewyn had said, and birds served under their feathers, and pies, stacks of pies. It hardly seemed so grim, the Quinalt holy day, as it had sounded in Efanor’s little list of instructions.

King Cefwyn pronounced the prayer: “Gods grant us peace, prosperity, and our heart’s desire. The gods look down on us and bless us all.”

“So be it,” Efanor said quietly, “and bless them that serve and them that guard.”

“So be it,” the queen said.

“So be it,” Aewyn said, and dug his elbows into Otter’s ribs.

“So be it,” Otter breathed hastily, and everyone smiled and looked pleased with the occasion, while the whole room and its colors and smells seemed a haze around him. For an instant all he could think of was how to traverse the length of that table and speak to the man who had fathered him. He had no idea now what he would say or where he would start once he did start to explain; but now he remembered how he had lied to Efanor, who had been nothing but kind to him. The queen had just gone out of her way to be kind. And Aewyn—Aewyn, who was entitled to everything by right—he had involved Aewyn, delaying telling him what Aewyn now knew, and now expecting his help. He sat in the heart of the family, Aewyn most of all having brought him here. Aewyn and his mother had each had more than a slight choice about welcoming him under this roof. Aewyn had poured out his affection and his wealth and his kinship on him as thoughtlessly, as generously as breathing. And the queen, who most of all had every right to wish he never existed—he still felt the tingle of her lips touching his cheek and the warmth of her hand.

No group of people in his life had ever had so much cause to wish he had never been born, and no one had ever been so generous toward him, except Gran and Paisi. What had he done to deserve such trust, and what did he do to repay it but a piece of mischief growing worse by the hour: it was what Paisi had said—it was not the obvious thing that was the crime: it was not taking Feiny; it was the Sending and the Seeing, right in the midst of their holy days.

Aewyn was not distressed, he told himself, over the soup. Aewyn would choose the best time, and broach the matter, and all he had to do was bow his head, beg forgiveness, and promise never, ever to cause any difficulty in the house again.

But for tonight, the way he had arranged with Aewyn, the matter stayed unbroached, throughout a lengthy dinner, course after course. There were small mince pies for dessert, with fantastical designs in the crust, and the centermost built into little towers. Otter could scarcely eat his.

“You mustn’t save it,” Aewyn said, nudging him.

He ate it. He wished he hadn’t. It brought him to an uncomfortable fullness, and he had his mouth full when the king and queen rose and announced they were retiring for the evening, together. It was his last chance to bring up the matter of Paisi—to blurt out, “I’ve done something terrible.” He swallowed the too-large bite. And he still couldn’t say it.

Everyone stood. Aewyn’s mother said it was time two boys should get themselves to bed, Prince Efanor concurred with the queen, and there was nothing to do but bow the head and accept it.

“And everyone to their own rooms,” King Cefwyn said pointedly, “or you’ll talk all night and be sorry in the morning.”

“Sire,” Aewyn said, bowing his head to a direct order.

So there it was. Aewyn was obliged to go off with his guards, and Otter walked beside him in the short distance to Aewyn’s room. After that he went on alone, down the hall, across the lonely gap of the grand stairway landing, and on into his own, less-lighted hall.

A few of the residents’ servants were out and about, carrying this or that. They paused and bowed to a boy in fine clothing. But no one stood guard at his door, and when he pushed down the latch and entered his rooms, they were almost dark, having only the light of a banked fire. There was no Paisi to have the candles lit, or to have stirred up the fire. The place was full of shadows, and they lurked deepest in the bedroom.

He put a few more sticks on the coals, to make a brighter light, and took the night candle and lit it—they had a jar of waxed straws by the fireside for that purpose. Then he gathered the courage to venture into the bedroom and light a pair of candles there.

The end of his straw burned off and tumbled as he lit the last. It aimed right for his sleeve, and he dropped the straw and stamped it out on the floor as he furiously wiped at his elbow, hoping it hadn’t just burned a hole in his second-best clothing. Close inspection under candlelight showed only a little black about the elbow: it was a narrow escape.

He took off all his finery forthwith, to hang it up in the clothespress. To his dismay, there was a gravy spot, or a touch of greasy fingers, on his coat. He tried, with the washing basin, to wash it out, shivering in the fireless cold, but he feared he only made it worse.

And he dared not oversleep in the morning, that above all. To save time in the morning he laid out his Fast Day finery, disposing it on the small dining table, and on the chairs. Then, shivering and unable to feel anything in his feet, he snatched up the chill coverlet from the bed and wrapped himself in it, heading for the fireside where the warmth was.

He poked the fire up a bit. He decided to burn the last of the bread and cheese he had laid here, all proper, not taking a chance on being late in the morning and forgetting it. It stank as it turned to ashes, and the cheese caught fire and ran over the coals before it turned to ash; the sausage became a little log, smaller and smaller, but the fat in it lent light and warmth right along with the wood.

It seemed a sin to burn food when there were so many hungry in the world.

And tomorrow they and all their beasts would go hungry to remember the poor, he supposed, and to feel what it was to have an empty belly.

But he had rather have given the food away to someone who hadn’t any. And he wagered the kitchen stores were still full, so what provision had the Guelesfort made about that? Did they carry it all out and bring it back tomorrow? Surely they didn’t throw out all the barrels and barrels of goods, or burn all the bread.

Fire, fire to light the night. He warmed himself enough, finally, to get up and scurry back to the bedchamber to douse the candles, and then, hating the dark, he came back to his warm quilt and warmer stones, all tucked up and very weary now. It seemed days ago he and Paisi had sat by this very fire, but it was only this morning, and they had made their theft and gotten away with it, and he had trudged up the hill and met Prince Efanor, which had led to tonight at the king’s table… all, all in one long span of hours that left him very tired, very relieved Aewyn forgave him, and very prone to drop off to sleep.

He daren’t, he told himself at first, and then thought he could risk a little nap, sitting up by the fire, his head on his arms and the blanket close about him. He put a new stick of wood on, then let his eyes shut, if only for a very little time, and listened to the snap and crackle of the new wood.

x

FIRE, FIRE AND WAILING, FIRE THAT LEAPT UP AROUND GRAN’S ROOM, AND sealed the doors and the windows. The wailing was of a soul in pain, and the fire became a roar, burning face and seared eyes…

“No,” Otter cried. “No!” He flung off the blanket to wake up, and scattered coals, and put his hand on an ember, which made him cry out and flinch.

He had flung the corner of the coverlet into the firebed, and he snatched it back in pain and fear, putting out the smoldering fire on the fine blanket with his bare hand. Pain and smoke alike made his eyes water, and he sat bare-shouldered in the chill, cradling a burned hand. The fire had gone nearly out, which had saved him from setting the whole coverlet afire. He sat and shivered.

He had put out the candles and let the fire die down to embers, and in doing so, he had thoughtlessly lost all markers to tell him the hour. He looked at windows which showed a haze of light, but when he got up, shivering, and tried to see whether that was approaching dawn, no, it was only snow haze around the two torches that burned all night, and a few more about the Quinaltine, obscured in a brisk snowfall.

There was no knowing what time it was, and he had to be up and dressed on time, above all else. The nightmare and the burn had his stomach upset, and his limbs shivered as he went out into the little hall and listened at the door for anyone stirring outside. He opened the door to the outer hall and looked out, wondering if there might be a passing servant, but the hall was eerily dark, with only one watch-candle still burning far down by the landing, and none in his wing. He shut the door and retreated back to his fire, lost, with no idea what hour it was and not daring go back to sleep now.

He built the fire up again, shaking so from the fear of the nightmare and from the cold that his knees knocked against each other. He thought of how Paisi might be sleeping in fair comfort by the merchant’s campfire, in some wayside shelter. And then he wondered if Paisi had dreamed the same nightmare.

That was the most terrible thought, that it was another warning, and he could not confirm it to Paisi, nor could Paisi tell him what he had seen.

Danger, it foretold. Danger of a terrible kind. Sickness, and then fire in the night, cutting off all escape for an elderly woman fevered and abed. He sat shaking from a chill he could by no means banish, watching the tame fire in the hearth leap and jeer at him. The crackling and snap of the fresh wood sounded loud in his ears, and he sat there listening to it, finding it more and more ominous.

Best he get up and get dressed and not compound his faults in the household. He heated water in the little warming pan, washed, and dressed in the colors that, in the grim firelight, were red made more red. The shield with the gold Dragon glittered with fire, and the Dragon’s eye glinted with it. He pulled it on, piece by piece; he combed his hair, and put on his fine new black boots, and sat down, this time like a city lad, in one of the two chairs near the hearth, arms folded tightly across the Dragon, his eyes on his boot toes, then on the fire that leapt and menaced in the hearth, a dragon of its own kind.

His eyelids grew heavy. But he was ready for the morrow. The moment he heard a stir in the hall he would go out and go downstairs to wait, even if it was only the servants going about their business. Better early than late, he said to himself. If he turned up in the lower hall an hour early, as well wait there as here.

Supper with the royal family seemed a distant dream, something that, like these clothes, never could happen to Gran’s boy, like the life that never could happen to Otter, just Otter, who drew the water and tended the goats—Gran’s foundling, the witch’s brat.

His eyes shut. He fought them open once, twice, the third time, or perhaps failed, for just a moment. He saw a slit of firelight, and then more, and the fire roared up, thundering around him. He saw fire in the goats’ eyes as they fled in confusion; he saw fire shooting up the little berry bushes by Gran’s door, the ones that grew close and snagged a cloak if they weren’t careful. He saw fire eating up the thatch of the roof, and he was inside, and Gran slept in her bed under her patchwork quilt, and he couldn’t wake her. “Gran,” he cried, shaking her. “Gran!” He lifted her, blankets and all, and tried to shoulder his way out the door, but a beam fell down to block his escape, and fire rained about them.

“Gran!”

He waked so violently he nearly fell out of the chair, and clung to its arms, sweating, not daring move until he knew for certain where he was.

He made his feet move then, just to prove it was no longer the dream around him. He unclasped his hands from the arms of the chair and stood up and walked about a bit, while everything rippled and leapt with fire-shadow and firelight. He reached for the amulet he wore, that luck piece Gran had given him, and for the first time since she had put it about his neck, remembered it was not there. He wanted to touch it, to hold it, and find that warmth of memory it always had. It might, he thought, tell him that Gran was safe and assure him that it was only an empty dream.

He lit the watch-candle and went to find his luck piece, down at the bottom of the cabinet, in the glove where he had hidden it. He shook it out, gathered it in his fist, and it comforted him to have it, but there was no great sense of presence in it, and it failed to ease his fear.

“Gran,” he whispered, holding it in one hand before his lips. “Gran, do you hear me? Be careful of the fire. I had a dream. Are you all right, Gran?”

It grew cold in his hands, cold as the room around him.

And everything was still, everything but the fire crackling in the other room.

He shut his eyes tight, and saw flames and felt the pain of the burn on his clenched hand.

His stomach hurt with fear. Shivers took his limbs. For a moment he thought of slipping down to the stable and escaping onto the road to find Paisi, going home where they both belonged. But he had given Paisi the only horse easy to reach, and the gate wardens would stop him this time. He was trapped, and all he could hear in the world was the crackle and snap of the fire, while the amulet stayed cold in his fingers.

There was one way to know. There was a thing Gran did, when she needed to foretell for a neighbor or, once, for Lord Crissand, when he came to her cottage at night and in secret.

The Guelesfort was still and hushed, with no one to see him. He could do it: he knew what Gran had done. If Gran wouldn’t listen to him by way of the amulet, then the amulet itself might gain her attention… if she was all right. There was that dread, dire chance that the dreams hadn’t come from Gran. There was the chance they had come from the tower in Henas’amef.

And if that was so, if dreams from that place had reached them, disturbed their sleep and sent Paisi out into danger on the roads, then it was possible he could tell Gran that, and if he did—then Gran would be able to deal with it. Gran would go into town and tell Lord Crissand, was likeliest, who would realize what his mother was up to and put a firm stop to it.

He just had to be quick, and do it now, if he was going to do it, and clean up before he ever heard a stir of servants in the halls.

He needed a string—the cord from a shirt tie served for that. He had the washing bowl. He had clean water from the pitcher. He had oil, from the little bottle they had on the dressing table, for chapped hands and cold-stung faces. He had a candle and a writing quill, which was the feather that would disturb the water.

He hung the amulet from the string, a bond between himself and Gran, so the Seeing would go where he wished. He threaded the feather through a knot in the string and held the string so the tip, hanging down, just touched the oiled water in the bowl. He waited while the draft in the room breathed warmth on the feather, and it trembled as it just touched the water, only slightly disturbing the film of oil.

On that watery surface he looked for his vision, and if he looked at the curls of oil just so he tried to convince himself he could see a fence, and a cottage, and a chimney, that beloved, crooked chimney, perfectly safe.

“Gran?” he said, and his breath disturbed the feather, and made new ripples on the oiled water.

He tried to see her. He tried to see her sleeping—or sick in her bed if that was the case. He tried to make his voice reach her dreams.

“Gran? Paisi is coming home. Paisi is on the road tonight, safe with some traders. We’re both well. Oh, Gran, be careful of fires. Be ever so careful. I had a dream that worries me…”

He heard a step in the other room. He looked up and saw a shadow between him and the fire: Aewyn’s serving-maid, with a tray in her hands.

She saw him. Her hands flew up to her mouth. The whole tray crashed to the floor, in a ruin of pottery.

He seized the cord, took the basin up to try to pretend it was something else. A flood of oiled water slopped out over his arms, down his body, and the maid squeaked and ran back the way she had come, leaving tray and all.

He clutched the amulet fast and took the bowl, to dispose it back on the washstand, his floor awash in spilled water, spilled oil, and spilled porridge.

Aewyn’s maid, the one the guards had teased, had been bringing him breakfast.

He tried to mop the oily water off himself. He went to the fire and tried to blot himself dry, but the oil clung, and would stain when it dried, like deadly sin. Word of that sin was running down the halls by now, unstoppable, on the lips of the one servant who was devout Quinalt.

i

THE WHOLE FAMILY WAS ASSEMBLED, ALONG WITH THE LESSER LORDS AND Officers who lived in the Guelesfort, down in the lower hall, with all the candles lit. Some of the lords who had the grand houses about the square had come in, to walk in the procession with their banner-bearers and their households. The crowd grew. Still there was no Otter, and Aewyn fretted, standing at the foot of the grand stairway, positioned so that he could see and signal Otter the moment he appeared on that stairway.

He had sent the girl with breakfast, to be sure, for one thing, that Otter didn’t oversleep. And he knew above all other things that Otter was shy of the maids and would have hastened her right out after she delivered it. It had been a little joke, a prank on Otter and on the maid alike: he knew it would send a fine blush to Otter’s face if he was caught abed, and the maid would set down the breakfast and run like a deer. But it had a practical reason, too. One of the men might have lingered, asked for Paisi and asked more questions—so the maid had been the best choice.

But it was the verge of dawn, Otter still hadn’t come down, while the family was all bundled up against the cold and much too hot, standing and waiting. Everyone was preparing to leave, and it was surely only Otter who kept his father waiting this long. Aewyn fretted in silence while the lords talked together in the solemn, irritable way people did on Fast Day. No one was in a particularly good mood, having been awake an hour or so ago, in the dark, to get something on their stomachs. Now breakfast and tempers were wearing thin in the anticipation of a day of no food, no comfort, and dreary sermons about sin and damnation.

Oh, he wished now that he hadn’t been so clever, that he’d just taken Otter’s breakfast down the hall himself and let his servants and guards fuss about it. The maid was a skittish fool as well as a prude. Everyone knew that. She was not only scared of men, she was scared of Amefin folk, scared of everyone who wasn’t Guelen. It was even possible she’d never taken the breakfast there at all and that Otter was still asleep in his bed, with no one to wake him. If that was the case, he swore he would have her beaten.

“Where is he?” his father walked near to ask him.

“I don’t know, sire,” Aewyn said faintly. “He should have been here. I sent my maid with breakfast, to wake him. Shall I go up and find out?”

“We have to leave now. We have no choice,” his father said, vexed, then turned and dispatched one of his own bodyguard upstairs on the spot, with orders to rouse Otter.

No choice. No choice, now, and no Otter with the family, Aewyn thought, as his father waved a hand and set the whole processional moving toward the doors. And it was the worst outcome: his father’s men were apt to ask close questions, particularly if they did find Otter abed, and Otter was a godless Amefin, in the reckoning of all too many Guelenfolk. This morning was to be Otter’s chance, his moment to make his best appearance before all the people, nobles and commons, to be written in the book and quietly mend so many things that had been wrong as long as they had been alive.

It was Otter’s chance, and if he didn’t come down the stairs in the next few moments, it was worse than a missed chance: it was a disrespect to the Quinaltine and to the family and most of all to their father… only the family knew it, of course, at this point, but that meant the family servants and guards knew it, and that meant kitchen staff was going to find it out by noon, and half of Guelemara was going to know it by nightfall.

The great doors opened on the dark. Lantern-bearers went downstairs and out first. The snow fell in a fine sleet outside, hazing the lanterns and the torches, as a wave of cold gusted in at them. A priest and two acolytes met them at the doors—doubtless they had been freezing quietly for the last half hour. The priest walked ahead, chanting about sins and atonement and ringing a bell, the acolytes swinging censers, which glowed with inner fire.

The family walked first after that. It was too late, too late, now, for Otter to make his appearance; and with a backward and despairing glance at a vacant stairway, Aewyn fell in with his mother.

Incense could not linger in the wind. It left the censers as fast as it rose, leaving nothing but the faintest impression. That walk down the Processional Way and into the Quinaltine square was even more exposed to the wind, and the steps of the Quinaltine itself had gotten slick and treacherous despite the boys generously sanding the treads. Aewyn stayed close to his mother, who had refused to relinquish Aemaryen to the nurse this morning and was in no cheerful mood.

Inside, the incense was thick in the comparative warmth, the dim sanctuary packed with worshippers who rose to their feet, a thunderous echo as the family walked in. Anyone who might have thought to see Otter with the royal family this morning looked in vain… an absence that would signal something in itself. Aewyn walked by his uncle’s side, his mother and father walking together down the aisle, with his little sister in his mother’s arms. Trumpets sounded, startling the handful of pigeons who always seemed to have found a way to settle on the lofty cornices inside, and the choir broke out in a hymn of repentance and sorrow, while the birds flew about in consternation. In his heart, Aewyn wished he could fly up and sit elsewhere—up in the dark rafters would be nice, where no one had to look at him, but the family was destined for the very front row, up by the railing that seperated the priests from everybody else.

They reached their seats. When the king sat, then the nobles and the commons could sit down. The skittish pigeons flew into the sacred place and out again, and the priests arrayed themselves behind the altar that divided the railing.

His father’s bodyguard was always right behind them. So was the Prince’s guards, who still attended Efanor, and Guelen guards stood at intervals by the pillars as the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Marshal of the North reached their seats. The majority of all the seats went to the nobles, the rest to the richest burghers of Guelemara—the poor were obliged to stand out in the dark as the sun came up and the snow came down, for the whole length of the services, while the priests talked about sin and repentance.

Do the poor people get a service, too? he’d asked his father, a year or so ago, and his father had said, No. The sermon is on sin. Rich sinners contribute more. And probably, with the nobles and the burghers, His Holiness has the right audience.

Hush, my lord, his mother had said, looking about at the servants.

And his father: Rich men give power. That’s the offering the priests most covet. The boy should learn that. He’s of an age to know how the world goes.

The priests shouldn’t hear you say it, his mother had said, and his father had said:

See? Power. Power is what they want most. And, mark me, son of mine: they shouldn’t get too rich a diet of it.

He was supposed to be meditating on his sins, not on the priests’ bad behavior; but there it was: he meditated on that exchange with his father instead, every word of it brought fresh in his memory by present circumstance. He meditated on Otter, and their plot to feed the horses, against the priests’ will; and on Otter’s absence this morning, which worried him no end, and was probably because Otter, who was shocked that people lied, had decided he didn’t want to be lied to when he was as upset as he was about his gran. His father’s guard had failed to turn him up; he had heard no late arrival coming in.

He hoped Otter had just gotten upset and hidden away when the search started—Otter would do that: he had no great trust of soldiers. He knew all the hiding places Otter could use, all the secret places he had shown Otter in the Guelesfort, and if Otter was hiding, he would be deeply hidden, where his father’s guards, not having spent a childhood in the Guelesfort, would not likely look—or fit into.

The Holy Father got up and talked about sin, sin of thoughts and sin of deeds, sins of omission and sins of commission, in clerkly detail. His Holiness said they had to examine all they did and failed to do, all they thought of doing and all they refrained from doing. It seemed to Aewyn that if they did all that, they’d never budge from where they sat, and he was otherwise inclined. His thoughts were already winging through the Guelesfort, impatient to act the moment they escaped the sanctuary.

Aemaryen began to fret, a thin, plaintive cry. Other babies took to crying, which roused still others, so that it was a wonder the priest could remember what came next. But crying babies led him to talk about lamentations for sins: lamentations, as if babes in arms had committed any sins. End to end of the dome it racketed, unfed babies, unhappy mothers and fathers, fretful two-year-olds, who had to be admonished not to fidget, and toddlers, who only knew they were hungry, too, and kept swinging their feet or squirming.

Aewyn sat and clenched and unclenched his hands, clenched his toes in his boots, bit his lip and counted the rosettes on the railing behind the altar. When he was done with that, he counted the orbs that decorated the screen behind the altar; and then he counted the intersections of bars that screened the choir.

The choir stood up and sang, a high, piercing wail, lamenting the sins of the world. By now every baby in the sanctuary was crying—crying for the sins of the world, the priests said, like the dumb, unfed beasts. His mother spent her service trying to comfort the baby, while his father sat stone-faced and unmoving at this comparison.

And somewhere in the halls of the Guelesfort, themselves missing services, his father’s guard kept searching, he supposed, to no avail yet, since they hadn’t dragged Otter into services like some escaped felon.

But, oh, gods, he thought then: if they had started looking for Otter, they were likely looking for Paisi, too—and that trail went clear to the town gate and on.

It certainly wasn’t the way they’d hoped for their father to find out about Paisi’s escape. Otter might think of that, too, and just run for it, being a skittish sort.

Lamentations for sins, and a spate of long, long singing. Aewyn made himself sit still, working his toes to keep his feet from going numb on the chill floor. He lost track of what the Holy Father said, wondering how far Otter could get in three hours, if he had suddenly decided to follow Paisi, and run.

If he had… their spring was ruined. Everything was ruined.

If he had… maybe he was as far as Esbrook, by now, but not if the snow was still coming down outside. It had been snowing before dawn. But in the shadowy bowels of the Quinaltine there was no way to for him to know now whether the snow had stopped or whether it had come on a blinding blizzard.

Third long lamentation, and a prayer for which they all must stand, even the king and queen. Aewyn stood up in his new boots, working his feet to bring the blood back to his toes. The sanctuary by now smelled of musky incense combined with wet fur, furs that had come in snowy and then, soaked from snowmelt, now overheated. Everyone stank, stank of fur, stank of perfume.

He wanted desperately to be back in the Guelesfort. If he was there, he could find Otter. He knew where to look, and he could talk to Otter and get sense out of him—if he hadn’t gone for the gate.

At last, at last, the singing drew down to the final hymn, the one that cursed the Bryalts. Aemaryen had long since exhausted her outrage and dropped off to sleep, one small arm trailing from his mother’s arms, and he saw his mother’s weary and angry expression, her impatient side-to-side rocking of his little sister. Nurse, who was in the row behind, leaned forward and mutely offered again to take the baby, but his mother doggedly shook her head and kept rocking Aemaryen, her lips grimly set.

He had never taken the service seriously in his life. Now the words embarrassed him, angered him. He accidentally met his mother’s eyes. Not that much longer, that expression said. His mother meant to endure the insult for his father’s sake; and his father knew, and his father’s jaw had a muscle jumping. He realized for the first time how very greatly this annual show upset everyone, how his father himself didn’t have the power to prevent the Holy Father doing this; and he told himself that when he was king, he would find a way. He might have to be Quinalt all his life, but he would find a way to get the better of the priests. His sister would have to grow up Bryalt, and leave them, and go to Elwynor to live, none of it her choice, either: that was the way of kings and queens. But they had much happier festivals in Elwynor, the same as in Amefel, and he and Otter would go there and visit his sister when they liked. He would do all of that when he was king.

But when he was king, he would have no father to guide him, and he couldn’t at all look forward to that day. So he would be patient, oh, so patient, standing here every year for years and years and years if he had to. He would grow angrier, and angrier, like his father, whose feelings toward the priests and whose occasional blasphemies he began to understand entirely. He would store it all up, for his mother’s sake, for his sister, and for Otter, too. He would make himself strong, and clever, like his uncle Efanor, but, unlike Efanor, he would not work with the priests, to manage them, but against them, one and all, head-on and headlong, as his father would say.

Finally, finally, the Holy Father held up his arms, invoked the gods for mercy, and dismissed the congregation.

Thank the gods, he said to himself, not half-reckoning what he was thinking. The royal family at least had the precedence in leaving the sanctuary, and he followed his father and his mother down the aisle, Aemaryen suddenly yelling with might and main.

The great doors opened on a white, snowy morning, and they walked out into the clean, cold air, down the sanded steps, and past the lines of Guelen and Dragon Guard who made a barrier against the general townsfolk. They walked, Aemaryen hiccuping and furious, and kicking, now, so the nurse finally intervened, for decorum’s sake. Trumpets blew, and the great iron gates of the Guelesfort swung outward to receive them home again.

All Aewyn was thinking of by now was to slip away from the family and go to Otter’s room, by the first, not the grand, stairway. The moment they passed into the warm, close dark of the Guelesfort he dived aside and ran up the stairs the servants used, with his own guard in confused pursuit.

The upper hall had all the candles lit despite the light from the windows. He hurried to the room Otter had, where guards stood.

“Have you found him?” he asked his father’s guards.

“No, Your Highness,” the answer was. “We’re still searching.”

“Your Highness,” his own guards tried to remonstrate with him, but he ignored their protests and hurried on, then, across the landing for the grand stairs, wickedly racing ahead of his father’s procession upward. He dived into his room and met his own servants’ startled faces.

“Where is he?” he demanded. “Where is Otter?”

“Your Highness.” Captys, senior of his servants, was there. Two others were. And Captys was clearly distraught.

“Where is Otter?”

“Your Highness, the maid, Madelys, saw him at witchcraft, and when—”

His heart turned over on that word. “Who said? Who said so? Madelys?” The girl hovered in the doorway beyond, knotting and unknotting her apron. “Fool! Where is he?”

“He seems to have vanished, Your Highness,” Captys said.

“Useless!” It was what his father would say, when he was at his wits’ end with the servants. “Stay here, the lot of you! You, too,” he added, stabbing a gesture at his guards. “Stay here and tell my father that I shall find him.”

“Witchery!” Madelys cried. “Your Highness, you might put yourself in danger!”

“I want her gone before I get back! Banished from these rooms, forever!”

“Your Highness!” Madelys wailed.

“Fool, I say!”

“No, Your Highness, I saw it! He had the water and the feather and a charm, and he was at it, plain as plain!”

“And you know so much about witchcraft I should be suspicious? Go down to the kitchens, and do not you say any word of gossip, girl, not one, on your life! Count it lucky I don’t send you to the Guard kitchens! Damn it!”

He spun on his heel and stalked to the door, and out it, with one furious look at his senior guardsman, Selmyn, who attempted to follow. “My orders!” he said. “Carry them out!”

With that, he slammed the door and ran, ran, ignoring his father’s party, which was just going in the doors: little Aemaryen, starving, sleepy, and furious, made noise enough to cover any commotion. He ran right past them for the servants’ stairs, up and up, past even the level where the storerooms were, and where his father’s men always searched if he was missing.

Upstairs, however, farther upstairs—one apparently useless little set of steps in the high end of the endmost workroom, if one got up on the counter, and above, there was a little trapdoor, an access to the eaves. He had shown it to Otter, the two of them up in the very highest part of the Guelesfort, looking out the littlest windows of all and watching people come and go in the yard, while they ate stolen sweets.

He had no candle, this time. He stopped still, standing right over at the opening of the trap, knowing by memory what was next, which was a lot of beams, but if he went farther, he would be utterly blind in the dark, with only the dim light from below to mark where the trapdoor was. If it were to be shut, it might take searching on hands and knees to find it again.

And Otter, if he was here, had shut it.

“Otter!” he called out, fearful to go too much farther without a light. “Otter, it’s Aewyn! Where are you?”

ii

AEWYN WILL FIND HIM,” CEFWYN MUTTERED, HAVING SEEN HIS SON RUNNING in the hall and knowing very well what he was about, given the report from the guards. “If he’s not away out the gates. Damn that girl!”

Ninévrisë set a hand on his shoulder. She had stayed by him. Efanor was elsewhere in the hall, tracking precisely where and to whom the maid had already prattled her tale of witchcraft and trying to forestall a priestly inquiry.

“The court will not have truly expected his appearance,” Ninévrisë said.

“They had rumors of it. And not a sign of him, nor Paisi, either. If they’re anywhere, they’re in the loft. Why doesn’t the Guard ever search the damned loft? We hid up there, in our day, there and the stables, but no one ever searches the loft.”

It was close quarters up there for a man without armor, let alone a guard in full kit, that was one reason. The juniormost servants had to perform that search, if needed—now and again an investigation went into that precinct. But it was a maze of timbers and nooks, and one boy determined to burrow deep into the eaves would not be found until he grew desperate from thirst.

And damn Otter for a fool—damn the circumstances that had sent a hare-witted girl to his rooms to spy on him. And where in the gods’ own name was Paisi?

Things had gone wrong, and gone wrong at several points, and it was not only the serving girl who fretted about magic. The king of Ylesuin had attempted to slip his sorcery-gotten son into respectable notice at court, attempted to gather up all the misdeeds and tag ends of his misspent youth and to do justice by those who hadn’t had it. Most of all he had tried to ignore the old connections, thinking he could just ease the whole untidy situation past the jagged edges of old magic, Sihhë magic, and Tarien Aswydd’s outright curse.

He wished, not for the first time, that Tristen had heeded his invitations and come to visit. He wished that, well before this day, he had risked the notoriety of the deed and ridden into the west himself, to visit his old friend. “Help me,” he might have said, had he had the chance to plan this visit for himself.

You left me this boy. You advised me to treat him kindly and do justice by him.

Now look. Now look, my old friend. He can’t come to the Quinaltine. He more than will not: there’s been this maid, this silly maid, it turns out, who spied the young fool doing what his Gran doubtless honestly taught him, and runs gibbering the news through all the Guelesfort.

And who sent the maid?

My youngest son did, Aewyn, who meant the boy no harm, no harm at all. I’m sure of that, among other things far less certain.

Are you aware what’s happened here, my old friend? I fear this is not just bad luck. It can never do so much damage and be nothing more than bad luck, can it?

But you told me once that luck was a sort of magic in itself, did you not? Or the workings of magic, was it?

Well, luck has run completely against the boy you bade me preserve, when it involves the Quinaltine. You told me yourself there was ill in that place, grievous ill, and old harm. Efanor confirmed it. And was it only my desire to be ahead of the priests and the gossip that made me force the boy into this appearance?

I mislike what I’ve done. I mislike greatly what has happened here, old friend. Be careful, you said. And was 1 careful enough, in my haste to see this through?

Clearly not so. Not nearly careful enough.

“My love?” Ninévrisë said, in his long silence.

“Do you perceive anything untoward?” he asked. The wizard-gift was in Ninévrisë, from her father and his fathers before him. Perhaps he should tell her about the writing there in the frost. He knew he was blind and deaf to such stirrings in the world, deaf as a stone; but something for good or for ill made him reticent, and her son, her son, Aewyn, who had always seemed as blind and deaf as his father—where was he, this morning, after fidgeting his way through services?

Their Aewyn had become as slippery as Otter, and sped off on the hunt without a word to his parents, bent on solving matters himself.

A father was the point the boys shared, the blind and deaf heritage. He had always assumed his blond, bluff son was like him; that if there was any witchery to turn up in his children, small, dark Aemaryen would have that perilous gift, and fair, tall Aewyn would be as deaf as his father.

“Otter is afraid,” Ninévrisë said softly. “Be forgiving of him.”

Another woman might take satisfaction in a rival’s child’s difficulty. Not Ninévrisë. Another woman might have been blind to the risks in the boy coming here, and equally those in his never coming here at all. Not Ninévrisë. She knew what was at issue and where it began.

He laid his hand on hers, where it rested on his shoulder. “Forgiving is all I can be. He is what he is, and I brought him here on Tristen’s advice.”

“None better,” Ninévrisë said. “And I will warrant the boy conjured nothing.” A little contraction of her fingers against his shoulder. “Whatever he did, did not pass the wards. I would feel it if he had.”

“Good for that,” he said, watching the snow fall and hoping he didn’t have a son out on the roads at this moment.

“Your Majesty.” The Lord Chamberlain himself entered the room. “His Highness Prince Aewyn, with Otter.”

Oh, indeed? That quickly?

He turned a serene countenance toward his staff, slipping Ninévrisë’s hand to his arm.

“Admit them.”

Bows, courtesies, ceremonies of approach and departure delayed everything in his life, and never the ones he wanted delayed. The Lord Chamberlain, an old, old man, went out to the foyer, doors opened, doors closed, opened again, and Aewyn finally came through them with Otter in tow, Otter wrapped in Aewyn’s cloak, the one puzzle in the sight, and Aewyn and Otter both a little cobwebby about the shoulders, which was no puzzle at all.

“He didn’t mean to,” Aewyn began, the immemorial beginning of excuses.

“One is very sure,” Cefwyn said.

“It was that fool Madelys, my serving-maid,” Aewyn said. “I sent her with breakfast, before the hour, and she screamed and Otter spilled oil all over himself, and he’d ruined his clothes. Paisi’s in Amefel.”

Now there was a model of concise reporting.

“Paisi’s in Amefel, you say.”

“He was worried about Gran, Your Majesty,” Otter said faintly, “with the weather, and all.”

“So I was going to have my staff look after him,” Aewyn said, with no space for a breath between them, “and see he had breakfast, but that fool maid walked in without a sound and thought she saw what she didn’t see.”

“Was there magic?” Ninévrisë asked, dropping her hand from Cefwyn’s arm. “Otter, tell the truth.”

“I tried, Your Majesty,” Otter said in the very faintest of voices. “I’m very sorry.”

“Why would Paisi go home?” Cefwyn asked.

“A dream, Your Majesty,” Otter said in anguish. “I had a dream. So did Paisi. So I told him he had to go.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday.”

A full day on the road, in this weather. Fool boy, Cefwyn thought, hoping Paisi was not frozen in a snowbank somewhere along the road. He made a little wave of his hand. “Let us see. Let us see the damage. Unwrap the cloak, if you please.”

Otter had clutched it tightly about him. The boots were not auspicious. He opened the garment, and showed a wreckage of good tailoring, from oil to attic cobwebs and dust, head to foot.

“Oh, dear,” Ninévrisë said.

Otter looked as if he wished he could sink through the floor.

“It’s not his fault!” Aewyn said.

“No, now, be still. Let Otter answer for himself. Paisi left yesterday, alone, one presumes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Well… not alone. I sent him with some traders.”

Cefwyn raised a brow. There had been a certain resourcefulness in the plot. There was a likelihood Paisi would get through.

“And being without wiser counsel, you took to witchcraft to see his progress? Or was there more to it?”

“I dreamed again. But I don’t know who Sent it.”

“A very prudent thought,” Ninévrisë said, with a look at Cefwyn. “Paisi’s gran might have Sent to him: there is that special connection. But Sending past all protections? I never felt it.”

Wizardry had passed the wards no less than Tristen Sihhë had laid about the Guelesfort windows… there was a troubling thought. An ordinary mouse could have made a new hole, a way into the walls, who knew? Ninévrisë saw to such things, quietly, in her own way, but there were ways to make a breach.

And there was—he never forgot it—one ready source of bad dreams in Amefel.

“So you sent Paisi away,” Cefwyn said deliberately, in the tone with which he daunted councillors. “And told no one.”

“He told me,” his younger son said.

“So you joined this conspiracy.”

“Paisi was already gone,” Aewyn protested, “and he wanted to tell you, but there was the dinner, and uncle was there, and he had no chance to, because of how he knew, and the servants coming and going; and he was going to tell you after services today, but the fool maid ruined everything.”

“Indeed. And where is the fool maid at this moment?”

“I sent her to the kitchens and told her not to talk to anyone.”

“In the kitchens, not to talk. Gods save us, boy!”

“I threatened her life,” Aewyn said.

“Of course,” Cefwyn said, ignoring Aewyn’s protestations, and looked straight into Otter’s eyes. “A problem broadening by the hour. Do you understand that?”

“I am the only one to blame, Your Majesty.”

No excuses, no temporizing. And, alas, no ready excuse that would cover it. The pale gray eyes that damned the boy in the observation of honest Guelenfolk stared back at him, incontrovertible heritage.

“Don’t use magic,” he said bluntly. “Am I asking a bird not to fly?”

“No, Your Majesty,” the boy said, and in the silence he left for further comment: “I didn’t want to use it. I won’t use it. I won’t, again, Your Majesty.”

A damned cold word, that. Father might have carried more intimacy, but the boy had never used that word to him. The exchanges between himself and his own father had been that remote; the tone recalled that fact with an unpleasant chill about the heart, remembering where that bond had ended.

“Well, well, we have to repair the damage as best we can. Tomorrow, dress in your second-best, that’s the way of it. More clothes are coming.”

A hesitation. “There’s a stain on it, Your Majesty.”

“Gods save us, dress in your third-best tomorrow and walk with us. We shall find you staff—who will not, hereafter, see you practicing witchcraft, if you please.”

“No, Your Majesty. Witchcraft, that is.”

“You’re confusing the boy,” Ninévrisë said, holding out her hand. “Otter. Elfwyn. Lad. Come. You shall have servants, if you please, and you shall walk with us in the morning to the services, if you will, and mend things with the Quinalt, the gods willing. Here. Give me your hand.”

Ever so gingerly Otter gave his hand, and Ninévrisë took it, kindly drew him close. “Don’t ever fear to approach your father, or me. It was a mistake, is all, a simple mistake, was it not? Your father will send men to Amefel to be sure Paisi is safe—will you not, my lord?”

Cefwyn cleared his throat. He had not yet thought of it, but it was the sensible thing to do.

“Bryalt as I am,” Ninévrisë said. “At least say that you are. Unaccustomed to Quinalt holidays, are you, lad? You shall have one of my candles: it smells of evergreen. You may light it in private, and no one will dare say witchcraft, only so you don’t do it in the halls. And you shall have holiday cake, after Fast Day is over. I shall send you some spiced cake, with honey, just the same as in Amefel, even if it is a little early in the season.”

Were there tears on those lashes? “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“And I shall have my own servants look in on you in your quarters, and draw your bath, honest Bryalt folk who won’t take alarm at a holiday candle.”

The voice grew fainter still. “Thank you ever so much, Your Majesty.”

“You could indeed have reported the dream to me or to your father, you know. You could have told it within this chamber, and even within our servants’ hearing.”

“And within Efanor’s,” Cefwyn muttered. “There’s no doing in Amefel that will affright any of this household. Be sure of that.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The barest whisper.

“So Paisi left for Amefel,” Cefwyn said. “Afoot?”

A little hesitation. A look of dread. “On my horse, sir. We couldn’t get to Paisi’s. But Paisi will take good care of him. And Feiny went in all his gear.”

An interesting notion. “If he isn’t hanged for a horse thief, clever lad.”

“My lord,” Ninévrisë chided him.

“Well, he should have come to us early,” Cefwyn said. “Have I ever done anything but good to your gran? Could you doubt I would send someone to inquire?”

“It was just a dream, Your Majesty.”

“Adequate to send Paisi out in the snow.”

“But if I did say, and you sent your guard, and they came to her door, Gran would never tell the truth, not if soldiers came asking after her. We cut all the wood we thought she might need, but this storm’s been going for days. She needs Paisi; she really needed him from the start, but she insisted on sending him with me. She’s all alone, now, and we had the dream, and she can’t haul the wood in if she’s sick.”

“Do you believe she is ill?”

“We both dreamed it, that she was sick.”

Otter’s behavior encompassed a wide maze of young thinking and young solutions, and with it, a fair amount of adult enterprise, slipping a highbred horse out of the stables, down the hill, and out the city gates in full kit. In the scales of magic active and passive, it was worth noting that after two days, there never yet had been a report the horse was missing, none yet that Paisi’s absence forecast Otter’s adventure in the Guelesfort rooftrees. No less than the Dragon Guard, skilled at uncovering miscreants of every sort, had been turning the Guelesfort upside down for hours without discovering either fact, let alone sending a boy into the heights.

Slippery and clever: that was one troubling attribute; and as glumly unexpressive toward his king as a habitual felon toward a familiar judge: the one might be a useful skill, even a princely one, but the other would not serve at all, not unless the boy found employment as a bailiff or a town magistrate.

“Well,” Cefwyn said, trying to provoke a happy spark in those gray eyes, “well, take care hereafter. And pray be caught by the servants in some Quinalt rite and stand with the family tomorrow dawn in services. If there arises any question you have observed the Fast—you have observed the Fast, have you not?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Well, well, much to the good. We’ll have a priest to declare it, and record your name—your true name, Elfwyn—in the Festival Record tomorrow.”

Otter brushed—uselessly—at his cobwebby, greasy finery, as if that could erase the oil. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And there remains the welfare of that rascal Paisi now as well as your honest gran. I shall send men down the road to be sure he got there and see that your gran receives all necessary attentions and supplies, without asking if she needs them.”

“Thank you, sire.” Gratitude shone out of those gray eyes, utterly clear and bright, lightening all about him for the moment it lived.

“Well, well, get on with you.” He gave a wave of his hand, dismissing the boys. A dark presence had come in by the door and deserved immediate attention. “Do as you please until morning. Then, gods save you, be on time in the morning! Nevris, I have a message waiting, doubtless. Your patience.”

“I’ll see the boys to the hall,” Ninévrisë said, understanding, and pressed his hand and swept the boys and the commotion out, doubtless to direct her maids to take certain action. A maid swept a candle and an evergreen bough from the mantel, then hurried off in a flurry of skirts.

He, himself had business with the shadow that, after due courtesy to the departing queen, had reappeared in his doorway.

iii

WELL, MASTER CROW?” CEFWYN SAID, AND THE SHADOW, A MAN ALL IN BLACK whose appropriate name was Idrys, entered the room. Lord Commander of the Dragon Guard, Idrys was, and in no happy mood—but that might be due to arriving from a long ride on Fast Day noon: no food, no drink to be had, and hours yet to wait for both.

Idrys gave a cursory nod, a weary nod, and sank into a chair. He had that privilege, in private as they were, and Cefwyn took the seat opposite.

“Lord Piram is buried, the old scoundrel,” Idrys reported. “With appropriate honors. And his nephew has overcome the son to take the lordship. The will was oddly found to confirm it—subject, of course, to royal approval.”

Never ask how that happened. But the son was feckless and a bully, the nephew worthy. At times Crow’s attendance on a scene improved matters immensely.

“I cannot offer you drink today, alas.”

Idrys shrugged, long-faced.

“I have, however, a mission, which you may undertake yourself, or commit to a man you favor.”

Eyebrow lifted.

“A mission of mercy, as is. Young Otter has had a vision. His man Paisi has gone haring off to Amefel to see to his gran’s safety—never ask why the boy became uneasy; but Paisi took a good horse and left. Search for Paisi along the road and make sure he gets to Amefel safely. In any case, the old woman is to have the best of care.”

“I’m to go chasing after the servant in a blizzard?” Idrys frowned, weary and out of sorts. “And this is my great benefice?”

“Yes, after the servant, Crow. Tristen set him to his post, so far more than a servant, and one I would not have missing in a snowbank, thank you. Nor would I see harm come to the old woman, with her connections. He’s taken my son’s horse, and he’s had two days’ start.”

“A horse thief, to boot. Do you hint I should go personally, or shall I indeed send a man?”

“Use your discretion. I am uneasy about this. I cannot define why, but it seems remarkable to me that Otter’s conspiracy could steal a highbred horse, escape the gate, and elude all detection for two days by the best of your men.”

The eyebrow rose a second time, and stayed. Master Crow understood such things, and knew that a run of luck where Aswydds or Sihhë blood might be involved was worth a closer look. He had fought in Elwynor and seen what he had seen.

“They’ll be coming to holidays in the west,” Cefwyn added slyly, “by the time your man could reach Amefel. There is the benefice.”

“The boy is here. Consequently I worry for things here, my lord king. I’ll send a man.”

“Cakes and ale,” Cefwyn said wickedly.

“They can be had here, today.” A man on Fast Day was not even supposed to entertain such thoughts. “A little removed from the heart of noble sanctity.”

“Blasphemy.”

“Yet the boy stayed behind and sent his man to Amefel. Duty to his sovereign, do you think, m’lord king? Filial affection? Ambition?”

“Or friendship.”

Idrys’ lips pursed, thoughts held silent on a pairing that had been Lord Tristen’s advice, the Prince and the bastard son. Idrys had made clear his personal doubts about this pairing, long, long ago.

“Friendship, I say, Crow.”

“Be it so, my lord king. Be they the most devoted of friends. But there are things I should look into.”

“The lad is slippery as the otter he’s named for. That we have seen. And, granted, I by no means like this claim of visions. But I do not think the source of ill resides in the boy. Not in him, nor even in Gran, if you take my meaning. Another reason to have a good man in Amefel.”

“Certainly things someone should look into,” Idrys said. “Or askance at, granted either man gets to Henas’amef through this weather. Questions my man should ask directly at the source, by your leave.”

Lady Tarien sat imprisoned in the Zeide tower, in Henas’amef.

“Have him ask them. His mother is not likely pleased with her son’s being in Guelemara. But that she could get past Paisi’s grandmother, with Tristen’s seal on her imprisonment… and again past wards here, that I would not expect.”

“Whence came the amulet in question?” Idrys asked.

His turn to raise an eyebrow. The snow on Idrys had scarcely melted, and he had gathered up the essentials of the scandal since his return. No one had mentioned amulets.

“One assumes… from the grandmother.”

“And the urge to deception?” Idrys asks. “From which side of the blanket came that gift?”

Master Crow had his ways, and annoyed him with impunity.

But Lady Tarien’s involvement in this was likely. If indeed an unhappy Lady Tarien down in Henas’amef had mustered both the will and the strength to make trouble, and found in a solitary old woman a boy’s vulnerability in which to do it… then the boy himself was, as Tristen would call it, a gateway within the Guelesfort, warded and guarded by the grandmother, it might be, but locks could be picked, with patience and skill.

“The boy has ample reason to be worried,” Cefwyn said. “And so have we—not least am I concerned about the grandmother. If she should pass from the world, young Otter is bereft; and I am not the one to deal with his less common abilities. He dreamed, do you hear, Crow? He dreamed. His man dreamed the same dream. He has the Sight, and he is no kin to Gran. That fact has come out, and will be whispered about in the kitchens.”

“No mystery whence the Sight came. He is half-Aswydd. But, alas, you would not be rid of him.”

“And Tristen, again, hear me, Crow, said take him in! Read me no sermons. Go or send to Henas’amef, and advise Crissand to watch his prisoner particularly closely this season.”

“Perhaps a poisoned cup? There would be a certain justice.”

“Lord Tristen advised against it,” he said, and it came to him when he said it that death, with wizards, was not always a guarantee. He had never thought of that, not in all these years, but a little chill went over his skin now, a confirmation.

“Well, I shall get to it.” Crow rose, bowed, a slight parting courtesy. “My lord king.”

Loosing Idrys was like loosing an arrow from the bow. Best give him a target and aim him carefully, or the wrong man could die, or the wrong events launch themselves irrevocably—not foolishly, but not always what one wanted.

“Tarien,” Cefwyn said, before Idrys could reach the door, “is not to be harmed or coerced. Nor is Paisi.”

“My lord king.” A second bow, a look as blithe and innocent as a blackhearted Crow could muster. “My man will carry your message faithfully. Have I ever failed you?”

iv

SEE?” AEWYN SAID, PERCHED ON OTTER’S BED, while the servants were busy cleaning and brushing his clothes and the royal bodyguards stood uselessly by the door. “He was not so angry as all that. And did I not say Mother would take your part?”

“She was very kind,” Otter said faintly.

“So be cheerful! All you have to do to make everything right is attend tomorrow morning and the next three days as if nothing has happened at all. The servants will clean your cloak. The tailor will have clothes ready tomorrow. And you have your own holiday candle. We can burn it on First Night of the Bryalt festival, the same as Mother does.”

“It does smell of evergreen.”

“Some of evergreen, some of bayberry. And I’ll wager Mother sends you more cakes on the night, too.”

“Was the king too angry?”

“He fretted. He scowled all through services. He was worried, mostly. I feared you had had another dream and run off after Paisi. Papa didn’t know what I knew. But I thought if you were still here and hidden, I might find you upstairs, in the hiding holes, where I did find you. Whatever were you doing with a bowl of water that scared that goose of a maid?”

Otter put his hands behind him and his head down—sulking, or at least he had that look. One never could be sure in Otter’s dark moods, when, like his namesake, he dived below the surface of his thoughts and not even the most persistent questioning could find him.

“Looking in the water,” Otter said.

It wasn’t at all an informative answer. Aewyn waited. Then Otter said:

“I miss Paisi. And I do worry about Gran.”

“Well, Captys can stay here tonight,” Aewyn said. Captys was his own chief servant. “You like him.”

“I suppose so. But I don’t truly need him.”

“Well, you certainly need someone. Or you can stay in my quarters until Paisi comes back! Father didn’t forbid it, did he?”

The spark showed in Otter’s eye, then faded. “No. No, I shan’t cause any more trouble. And I daren’t have you caught in it.”

“Me?”

“The girl ran. I have a sorceress for a mother and a witch for my gran. Everybody already thinks what they think, and I never want them to think ill of you. That would be the worst thing.”

“Well, let them try to do anything! You shouldn’t be afraid.”

“They burned Bryalt folk here.”

“They never did.”

“They burned your mother’s priest. Paisi told me.”

Aewyn was taken aback. He never had heard that, but Paisi had never told an untruth, either. It must have happened before he was born, in the trouble in those years. “Well, a good many things happened before us. They never will do it again. Father won’t let them.”

“Maybe not. But people here hate witches. Quinalt priests do.”

“You’re not a witch.”

“Wizard. Men are wizards. Women are—”

“Well, I wish you were. My father’s favorite tutor was a wizard, for what it matters. Emuin Udaman was a Teranthine, and Teranthines can be wizards, just like Bryaltines can be, with their priests saying not a thing about it, so there you are!” Aewyn swung his feet. “Father says if he could find another Teranthine, he’d be my tutor and I’d learn some sense. I almost remember Emuin. I think he should look again.”

Otter gave a grudging laugh, finally.

Aewyn asked: “So what were you truly doing with the water and the charm?”

“I was trying to see Gran, or Paisi. But I failed.”

That was disappointing. “I wish you could do magic.”

“Wizardry. Magic is born in you.”

“Well, whatever it is, I wish you had it. I wish you could show me. I should like to see it.”

Otter looked about them. The servants were all in the other room, and it had been a foolish thing to say, Aewyn knew it: but there, it was said.

“I wish I could,” Otter said. “It was the first time I ever really, truly tried, and it was no good.”

“But you had the dream.”

“I dreamed, but that was none of my doing, the dreaming, I mean. It would be a Sending. And we shouldn’t at all be talking about this.”

“Well, it is all nonsense, is it not?” The candle still sat on the table, where Otter had set it down. Aewyn slid off the bed and went and set it on the mantel instead, amid its evergreen bough. “See? Now we shall have a proper holiday, just like in Amefel and Elwynor. Change your mind and stay in my rooms!”

“I think I should stay here. I have trouble enough. And you should let the queen send her servants. Keep Captys. Thank you—thank you for rescuing me.”

“Piffle.” That was what his mother said to nonsense. “Piffle. I’m going back to my rooms, I suppose. But come after dark. Then we can have supper. Right after services tomorrow we can eat, and you can come to my rooms for supper then, too, do you agree?”

That drew a brighter look, a hungry look. Otter nodded yes, and Aewyn winked—his father’s wink—before he walked into the other room and gathered his servants.

v

THE WORLD SEEMED MUCH BETTER IN OTTER’S EYES: HE HAD THE KING’S FORGIVENESS, his brother’s invitation to supper tonight, the noon meal, and supper tomorrow, and the promise of the queen’s servants’ help if only he could keep out of trouble.

His brother had taken away his own servants and the guards. The rooms were neater than Paisi had ever made them, and he would like a bath. Baths were a luxury he had gotten to love, with all the chill of winter outside the windows and creeping into the stones, and, filthy as he was, he longed to be clean. There was the way they did it at Gran’s in the winter, a matter of soaking towels in hot water and scrubbing off; which was its own sort of comfort to wind-raw hands and cold-numbed feet, and he began to heat water in the bedwarmer to do just that.

He wondered how Paisi fared tonight: he would be well along to the river crossing by now, and he hoped Paisi was toasting his feet by a good fireside, with no constraints of fasting or praying in the merchants’ company. He had thought a great deal about Paisi, and how he could join him, during his hours of hiding in the drafty heights. He had been so chilled and hungry he had thought he would never be warm or fed again.

But the king forgave him. No one even seemed that angry. And the queen…

He visited the candle while the water heated. He smelled its green scent but did not touch it: it had a tingling about it, a magical feeling that whispered of forces, kindly forces, he thought… but forces, all the same, and a power that was neither Gran’s nor yet his own mother’s, and he was sure that if it were lit, the fire would loose those things around him. He was grateful to the queen, but he dared not be ready to loose a force he didn’t wholly know and let it have its way in his room. Gran and his mother alike had made him cautious in such regards, and Gran’s sort of witchcraft had gone amiss this morning, whether it was his fault or the Quinalt’s. He was not ready to try another pass at it.

Besides, the scent reminded him of home and weakened him, which was a spell unto itself; and had a power in its very nature. He felt it. And the queen was Ninévrisë Syrillas, of the old blood, the Sihhë blood, from long ago, like his mother’s Gift, though light and not dark. And Gran had warned him, had she not?

Ye respect the queen, young lad, ye respect that great lady. The Sight is in her, no question, like in her da, him under the hill in Amefel, an’ don’t ye e’er doubt it.

He gave a little shiver, as if a draft had touched him.

Or a door had opened.

It had. His heart jumped, as he found Efanor standing in his front room, Prince Efanor, accompanied by a priest in black robes.

“Your Highness,” Otter murmured, and achieved a small bow, trying to gather his wits in the process. And to the priest, respectfully, with another bow: “Sir.”

“Well, Otter,” Efanor said quietly. “You certainly had a cold, dusty day.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Perhaps the king or the Prince might have disapproved of Aewyn’s visiting here, after his misdeeds—or perhaps Efanor’s forgiveness would not come as easily as his father had led him to believe. Perhaps they had come to punish him, after all.

“Sending your man away was one thing,” Efanor said, “and whether that was wisely done or not remains to be known; but pretending otherwise, Otter, and deceiving your father and attempting matters which ought not to be undertaken here—by such small gaps in judgment other forces find their way where they ought not, getting into places where otherwise they cannot come. Have you any least notion what we tell you?”

“That I was a fool, Your Highness.” Efanor was the most scholarly Quinalt of anyone he had met, except the priests, and while much that Efanor said racketed through his hearing and never stuck at all, he had the one matter clear, that there was fault, and it was his, and that what he had done was dangerous in ways beyond his understanding.

“Well, well,” Efanor said, “you were that. And it was a boy’s fault, not to be repeated. Loneliness at holidays brings dark thoughts, which we simply shall not allow. The true story will go abroad, that illness in your gran’s house detained you this morning—that is the truth, is it not?”

It was, when he looked at it that way, a certain version of the truth. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Well, and hereafter you will not be alone. Brother Trassin will attend your needs, whatever they be, until your man finds his way back again, as I trust he will. Will he not?”

“He will, Your Highness.” He was distracted, casting an apprehensive glance at the man in priestly black. This was a dour-faced and solemn man, his hands tucked up into his sleeves: Quinalt, very surely Quinalt—though a monk, by the title, and not quite a priest.

Still a spy, Paisi would say. A sneak and a spy set here to catch a boy doing what he ought not, and what word of protest would priests believe if this man reported mischief of any kind?

“Come.” Efanor walked into Otter’s bedroom, and to the white-frosted window. There, having beckoned him near, Efanor set a hand on his shoulder and looked straight into his eyes at close range. “This man is a servant of the Patriarch, and will search and spy to prove there is no harm. You understand me. Have you anything you ought not to have in these rooms?”

“Gran’s amulet.” He pressed his hand against his chest, where, since this morning, it rested beneath his clothes.

“Give it to me, for the while.”

He was reluctant, but dared not refuse. He reached into his collar and drew it out, warm from his body, warm with Gran’s protection. Burning cold flowed toward him from the window the while, chill enough to sting.

“Good lad.” Efanor pressed something else into his hand, another warm object, on a chain. “Whatever gift comes in love is potent,” Efanor said, “against all manner of ills. Keep this close tonight and tomorrow, wear it openly, do well, and by Festival end, this man will be gone from your premises with a good report for the Patriarch himself—a costly favor I ask you, understand; a penance for you, one that will pay for your indiscretion.” Again the intimate touch of Efanor’s hand, but a calming one, a peaceful one on his shoulder.

It was a Quinalt sigil in his hand. It had no liveliness such as Gran’s coins had. But he obediently slipped the chain over his head and let it rest in plain sight, while his heart thumped away in fear.

“Good, good,” Efanor said. “There’s good sense there. Endure the brother. A necessary matter.”

“Yes, sir,” he whispered, and Efanor went away.

“Why is there an empty bedwarmer in the fireplace?” Brother Trassin asked.

It had boiled dry. “I would like a bath, sir,” he said. “Will you arrange one?”

Trassin frowned but went and did that. Water arrived, hot water and cold, and he did bathe, letting Brother Trassin see the Quinalt sigil, but he did not want the brother in the little bath while he was bathing. He wrapped in towels, dried his hair with them, and hung things neatly. The clothes—he hardly knew what to do with. He hung them up, too, in the bath, and dressed in his most ordinary clothing.

“I need my clothes cleaned, sir,” he said to Brother Trassin, and Brother Trassin, instead of taking them himself, went and called servants to do that, standing by in great disapproval until the dirty clothes and the towels disappeared.

“Were other clothes to come?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Trassin said, paying him no m’lord and no courtesy. He simply stood in the room, arms in his sleeves, the Quinalt sigil prominent on his breast, and that was that.

Brother Trassin stayed, no fount of conversation or pleasantry, and while he sat in his bedroom pretending to read, Brother Trassin pretended to clean the place again, opening all the cupboards and drawers and looking into everything in the process. Brother Trassin spoke never a voluntary word to him, except to give him certain long, long looks, as if he expected him to turn into a rat or a snake on the spot.

In those moments he felt very uncomfortable. Efanor had given him the other sigil he was wearing, a reminder that the Prince himself had contrived this and set a protection on him, perhaps for his father’s sake, or Aewyn’s.

Trassin continued his cleaning in the room where he sat. The queen’s candle drew another such look from Brother Trassin, and a sniff. The man went his way then into the bath, into more nooks and crannies.

Otter went on pretending to read until the light failed in the window, and Brother Trassin fed the fire in the other room until that light was brighter.

“We may break our fast now,” the lay brother pronounced, the only thing he had said, all day. “Shall I send down to the kitchens?”

“Do,” he said, as he would have said to Paisi—though Paisi would have gone down himself, and so far as he knew, there was no one for Brother Trassin to send. But he remembered with great relief that he himself had somewhere to go. “For yourself only, sir. I’m bidden to the Prince’s table tonight.”

“Then I shall conduct you there,” the monk said, and did just that—not lingering with Prince Aewyn’s staff when they arrived. Trassin departed farther down the hall, on his way to the kitchens, or to report to someone, Otter had no notion which. He was greatly relieved to find himself on the other side of the doors, in Aewyn’s receiving room, which smelled of a savory meal laid out.

“Ha! Just in time!” Aewyn called out, arriving in the other doorway, and came and flung an arm about him. “On time and hungry, are we?”

He took it for a reprimand and found nothing to say. He was in a glum humor. But Aewyn shook him in a friendly way and drew him toward the laden table—feast, as the long day had been famine—and poured a cup of watered wine. “Here, for a thirst as great as mine! I waited for you faithfully.”

“You needn’t have done that.”

“Of course I needn’t, I needn’t anything, but I wanted to. How is the spy?”

The wine caught in his throat.

“Brother Trassin?”

“He’s clearly the Patriarch’s spy,” Aewyn said, “the nasty old man.”

Otter looked left and right, to see which of the servants was in earshot. “Don’t say so.”

“Oh, nonsense. Uncle knows exactly what he is, and His Holiness sent him over here after the rumor reached him. Papa doesn’t like the fellow. He was my tutor for six whole weeks before Uncle found out he was the Patriarch’s man, taking notes. He was the most boring tutor ever anyway. All catechism. He loves to read lists. Probably he’s making one, in your rooms.”

It was not encouraging to hear. “Lists of what?”

“Oh, horrid charms and things. Which you don’t have.”

“No. Your uncle took it.”

“Your uncle, too. His Grace is not partial to Brother Trassin, I do assure you. Far from it. If he can get him in trouble, he’ll be ever so happy. Cheer up. Have some pie. It’s a wonderful meat pie.”

It was, crusty brown and full of gravy. They sat down at table and everything seemed redeemed. Wiser, older heads had patched all the harm, and peace would prevail, if only he could do the things he should do in the morning and pass the next few days without fault.

“And when Festival ends,” Aewyn said, “after all this is over and the to-do is done, then we shall have our hunting trip, even if your man stays on for festival in Amefel. We shall have my guards, my servants, so there’s no fuss at all about your man being away. We can hunt rabbits.” Aewyn popped a sweet into his mouth. “I can cook. Papa taught me how to cook on a campfire. I can at least do simple things. And we can bring most everything we need. Lots of blankets. It’s quite cold out there.”

The lodge seemed a sort of unachievable dream after this scrape. Otter could hardly believe the king would let them go off together to the country with no authority to keep them out of mischief. He kept his opinion to himself, however. If Aewyn was happy imagining the lodge and its wonders, and them turned out free to do as they pleased, then he was happy to agree.

And increasingly, he had no desire to go off somewhere until Paisi could send him news of Gran—good news. It must surely be good news, he told himself. Enough bad had happened, and now, this evening, and with a full stomach, his fortunes seemed to have changed.

vi

THE JUNIORMOST OF AEWYN’S GUARD WALKED OTTER DOWN THE LONG HALL TO his own rooms when Aewyn went to bed, and he was glad of the company. By that time the hall was on its fewest lights, and the shadows were deep and cold. He let himself in, saw his own fire banked for the night, and started violently when he heard a cough from the little side room, on his right hand, that room Paisi had never used.

Brother Trassin declined to stir forth, and he declined to summon him, only padded quietly past the fire and into his own chill and lonely bedroom to undress himself.

Paisi would have had a last log on the fire, would have warmed the bedclothes, would have shared his own warmth against the bitter chill, but he was satisfied enough to have Brother Trassin abed and invisible and by no means in the same bed with him.

The woodpile was greatly diminished. Paisi would have brought more wood up, with his own hands, without Otter’s ever suggesting it.

This priest hadn’t.

And clothes had, indeed, arrived; he saw that when he hung up the ones he was wearing. They were dark blue—nothing to provoke anyone. He had never seen queen’s servants come at all: if they had, he had been absent at dinner. But likely, he thought, Prince Efanor’s arrangements had replaced the queen’s with more specific orders and new plans.

And the windows in the main room and here had the curtains drawn. He never liked the curtains drawn. He went and tugged and pulled at the heavy draperies to open them wide.

In the tall window, in its very center, there was a Quinalt sigil hung, a pewter talisman as large as his head. He went out to the main room, confronted those drawn draperies and hauled them back, each one, while the sounds of snoring came from the little room beside the foyer. In each, there was a similar circlet, with the Quinalt symbol.

It was a ward of sorts, he supposed. He hardly liked it. The place already had wards. The sigils aimed at witchcraft, at Gran’s dreams, or his mother’s mischief, or his own wondering, he supposed. They might as well have been bars on his windows.

The same sigil, on a chain about his neck suddenly seemed part of the same design, but remembering what Prince Efanor had said about it being given in love, he feared to cast it off or, more rash, still, to bid Brother Trassin take those emblems down and leave his draperies alone.

He lit a candle and went back into the icy bedchamber. And by that light he found the queen’s candle and the evergreen gone from the mantel of the unused fireplace.

Dares he? he asked himself, indignation rising. Dares he throw away her gift?

Clearly the man dared whatever the Quinalt pleased.

He set the candle on the mantel, shivering with all this walking about. By that flickering light, he flung himself between icy sheets, gathered himself up in a shivering knot, and tried to warm a spot, breath hissing between his teeth.

He could not trust this man to wake him in the morning. If he understood Prince Efanor’s warning, and Aewyn’s, the man would like nothing better than to find him in the wrong. He couldn’t trust the man for anything. He lay awake long, long, watching out the window, where the night sky made the Quinaltine roof look like the back of some great hulking beast, a predator lying in wait for foolish boys, and the Quinalt sigil hanging like a wakeful eye between.

Frost patterns had formed about the edges of the panes. He saw them in the candlelight, saw the evidence that the bitter cold he felt was no illusion. He thought of Paisi, afield on this bitter night, and hoped he was warmer than this and in better company.

He hoped Aewyn was right, that Brother Trassin was in no good grace with the king. He truly hoped so. Efanor himself both scared him and comforted him—he was almost sure of his goodwill, but had not quite warmed to him—Efanor being a very quiet, very thoughtful man.

He was glad at least the day had ended with his father knowing the truth, and Efanor trying to patch things, and Her Majesty on his side. That was a miracle in itself, a sign of things going much, much better in the world.

He shut his eyes on that thought. He held them shut, though the thought began to tatter and flow away from him.

He saw Gran’s cottage, looking so forlorn in its little enclosure, so deep in snow.

But it seemed that as he came closer and closer, he saw that the shutters were hanging askew, and that half the thatch was missing, charred timbers in the opening.

His heart beat faster and faster.

“Paisi,” he called out. “Paisi, something’s wrong! It’s all burned, can you see it?”

The house all fell in cinders, no more than a heap of stones and smoking ash.

“Paisi!” He cried. “Oh, Gran!”

“Boy,” someone said somberly, and he waked with a hand on his shoulder, a harsh and demanding hand, and a face lit from below by a candle. “Boy!”

It was Brother Trassin shaking him awake, his face all harsh lines and frowns, Brother Trassin, who kept shaking him needlessly now, and ordering him to pray for the sins that troubled his sleep.

“Good gods deliver us,” he said all in a rush, “gods save us.” It was only what Gran would say when he’d been particularly bad or when she was startled. Gods save us from fools, was the rest of what Gran would add next, but he held that back, with Trassin standing above him. He recovered his arm from the brother, rubbing the sore spot the man’s hard fingers had made. “It was only a dream, sir.”

“You were chanting. You were calling out names in a trance.”

“I was asleep. I dreamed. I called for my brother and my gran, sir, just that. It was only a dream. That was all.”

“Mind how you dream, then,” the brother said, “and what you invoke.” With that Trassin walked away from him, taking away the candlelight, which leapt and flared and found strange edges to illumine as it left. It found edges of the clothespress, on which foxes were carved. It sparked off dark windows as the brother set the candle down in the other room and began to draw the draperies across the windows.

“Leave those, if you please, sir. I like the sky.”

The brother left the curtain half-drawn, contriving to make even obedience disapproving, and turned, picking up the candle that gave his countenance the look of something carved and baleful. “The night is full of harm,” the brother said. “It’s nothing wholesome to look at. No wonder you dream.”

“Good night, sir,” Otter said, wishing the man would just go away. He was shivering, his bare shoulders exposed to the air, and he was embarrassed about the prayer he would not have tried to make if he had not been startled into it, and most of all he was worried about Gran and Paisi, in the dream he had had.

He drew the blanket up about his shoulders and sat there trying to keep warm until the man took the light away.

vii

HIS HOLINESS’ SPY’S INSPECTION TURNED UP ONLY HER MAJESTY’S CANDLE for a sin,” Efanor informed Cefwyn, in the dim light before the dawn, before the procession downstairs. “I informed His Holiness whose gift it was, and we agreed there will by no means be any mention made of it in any record. The boy had nightmares. How not? I suggested that record, too, be expunged. Clearly the boy is distraught at his companion’s leaving. That will be recorded.”

Cefwyn regarded his brother sidelong and hung a dagger from his belt, discreetly on the side his cloak covered, while Idrys stood in shadowy silence, armed and waiting.

“So his indisposition and his innocence will both be in the record?”

“I have the Patriarch’s firm word on it.”

“Bad business, still, this messing with magic,” Idrys said unbidden. “And no surety yet the boy won’t bolt to Amefel, or spill another bowl of oiled water in his lap, if his bad dreams go on.”

“He’s done very well,” Efanor said smoothly.

“For an Aswydd,” Idrys said.

“Hush, Crow, damn you!”

Idrys inspected the back of his hand, on which a scar healed. “It is worth a thought, my lord king. The boy has arrived at a certain age, capable of passing on the Aswydd blood, never mind its own claims to royalty. As to what that blood does contain—did you not bid me ask about his mother’s sorcery?”

“His wizard-work failed, you’ll note.”

“All the same, who knows? He’s of an age. I’d not have his choice of bed-mates influenced from the Zeide tower.”

That was worth a cold, direct stare at Master Crow.

Efanor spoke, from the other side. “I talked with the boy that day,” Efanor said. “He quite deceived me. He must have just come back from horse-thievery when I spied him, the cat straight from the cream, and not a trace on him. He has cold-blooded cunning. He has invention. He has a strong will. But he is not a thief, not a coward, and not, so far as I may judge, a sorcerer, nor even a wizard, considering the outcome of his efforts. Perhaps you should teach him the martial life.”

“He scarcely knows the sword,” Idrys said. “He can hardly manage his own reins or stay ahorse. So I hear. The lad’s employment in the army is questionable.”

“So he’s no soldier. You’re in no danger, Crow. Don’t fear him so.”

“Scion of a line you outlawed, my lord king, root and branch, living and dead…”

“And I rescinded the decree for Crissand, aye, for him and for Otter.”

“Elfwyn,” Efanor said. Otter’s proper name.

“It was His Majesty’s notion to declare that name to the people yesterday,” Idrys said. “And he spilled oil on that notion, right handily. Did he not?”

“Damn it, Crow, is there no mischief elsewhere in the kingdom you can attend? Must you lurk about and annoy me?”

“The boy had no reason to avoid that name being proclaimed,” Efanor said.

“We know who would,” Idrys said.

“Her prison is secure,” Efanor said, “or nothing is.”

“Precisely,” Idrys said.

“Idrys has a man riding in that direction,” Cefwyn said to Efanor, “and will advise Crissand to take all precautions.”

“Well and good for that,” Efanor said. “But if there should be anything amiss with the grandmother… Write to Lord Tristen, brother. I strongly urge it.”

“Get that weasel of a lay brother out of the boy’s rooms. His Holiness has seen enough, heard enough, imagined enough. The spy is a feckless fool, and the boy is already upset. Withdraw all appearance of guards.”

“To catch whom?” Idrys asked. “The boy, or the Holy Father?”

“Hush, damn you, Crow! Why,” he asked Efanor, “do I tolerate this quarrelsome man?”

“Which one?” Efanor asked, smooth as milk. “The Lord Commander, or the Holy Father?”

Idrys opened the door for them, performing the office of a servant in this meeting without servants, with only Idrys’ men outside, and at least one of their number, by Idrys’ word, well launched on a snowy mission to Amefel.

“Come,” Cefwyn said. There was worry enough, all considering. Ninévrisë would be waiting for him, with the baby, who was not a patient child, particularly when waked and dressed before sunrise. Aewyn would be fretting in the hall, or off looking for his half brother, to be sure, this morning, that Otter showed up for services.

He by no means liked the advice he had had from Efanor and from Idrys.

But if there were anything untoward in Amefel, Efanor was right: Tristen would know it.

Would you not, old friend? he asked the amulet he wore. Would you not know if that vile woman had breached the wards?

You promised us to watch over us. I’ve tried not to do foolish things.

I’ve kept my word to you. That was never foolish, no matter what Crow and my brother think.

viii

READY, READY, THOUGH OTTER WAS ALMOST LATE, AND BROTHER TRASSIN STILL fussed with his cloak pin and wanted to teach him the morning prayers.

“Please you, sir, I mean to learn, only His Majesty is waiting. I have to go downstairs. Gods bless us.” He perceived it mollified the man when he said that, and he said it twice, breaking away. “Gods bless us, the Five bless us…”

It was the start of the prayer at least. The Five bless us at sunrise and sunset, in sunshine and rain…

And shall they bless us in snow, his rebel wits wanted to ask, and his terrors conjured worse than that. And shall they, in fire? Save us from fire. Gods save Gran from the fire. Oh, Paisi, go, hurry as fast as you can…

He escaped Trassin’s attentions and hurried as fast as he could keep his footing on the polished floor, out the door and down the hall, past the doors from which the few other residents would already have departed, onto the grand stairs, with a quick grip on the balustrade, his feet skipping ever so fast.

He heard a gathering below. He was not too late. He saw the glitter of gold, a red cloak—Aewyn’s. He himself wore his new dark blue coat, his good black boots, restored by the servants. Brother Trassin had insisted on helping him wash and dress, and, it turned out, had wanted to pray over him at every stage, while he tugged his shirt on and fastened his laces himself.

The blue cloak, accidentally pinned through his doublet, was crooked. He seized it in one hand and tried to straighten it as he reached Aewyn and the family, and Their Majesties. He bowed fervently, and intended to move toward the side of the hall, to keep from any conspicuous notice while he repinned the cloak.

“Here you are, on time, and you look grand,” Aewyn declared, and turned to his father. “Doesn’t he?”

“Perfectly fine,” His Majesty said, laying a hand on Otter’s shoulder, “and just in time. Move us out, if you please, Lord Marshal. Move us on, here, and let us get this under way.”

The assembly began to move. The queen carried the baby in her arms, and Aewyn walked beside his father. Otter lagged back, finally securing the pin, hoping just to follow as quietly as possible, losing himself among the Guard and the officials who thronged the hall. Aewyn, however, turned half-about, caught his sleeve, and drew him forward without a word.

A gust fluttered all the candles and blew out half of them as the great doors opened on the dark outside. Staffs began to turn, unrolling banners that took increasing flight on that wind. Torches outside showed a world of falling white, and perilous steps, where Prince Efanor lent his hand to help Ninévrisë and the baby.

The way led along the center of the paved courtyard to those gates that were rarely open, tall iron gates with spikes along the top. Torches went before them onto the street, a war of fire and banners as the gusts battered both flame and cloth.

From there the way led beside the tall windows and high walls of the Quinaltine, and around to the broad, high steps where a throng of people had gathered. These steps were sanded, and easier than they looked. Having braced himself at the sight of them, Otter let go a wider breath and walked up with ease in among the columns of the porch, and, beside Aewyn and the king and queen, into the echoing dark beyond the great doors.

A shiver took him there. It was warmer inside, but only tolerable. The massive candles, posed at intervals, relieved only the dark immediately about their flames, cast light on the lower portions of towering marble pillars, while the space above and behind was lost in dark. Shadowy crowds of richly dressed people stood on either hand, having reached their seats before them. The end of the aisle was ablaze with light, a diffusion of a hundred pale candles of every size, like looking at the sunny world from the heart of some horrid, chill dark. The soul wanted to fly toward that safety, but the speed of the procession was set, and they proceeded at the same pace as on the steps. A choir sang, a mournful echo roused out of the spaces above the pillars; and priests swung censers, sending up clouds of incense that began to veil the light.

Otter wanted to sneeze. He wanted to very badly, and choked it back into an embarrassed hiccup as they reached their benches and filed in. His eyes watered.

The king sat. Everyone sat down, with a rattle and bump of the benches throughout the great sanctuary. Aewyn sat on the side nearest his mother, Efanor came next, and Otter sat at the end of the row. He watched as a bearded old man all in white and gold stood up in front of all the candles and the altar and lifted his hands. He began to talk about sin and dark, then the coming of the sun.

That last was comforting. Otter supposed this was the Holy Father himself, and found he had a persuasive, calming voice: he even agreed with what he heard, thus far; but then a pair of priests accompanied an even older man into the place of the first, and that old man began to chant in a reedy voice about sun and shadow, and the willfulness of Men, and the sins of the age.

It was not so pleasant as the other voice, and the reasoning eluded him, but Otter listened attentively, and stood when everyone stood and sat when everyone sat, and tried not to fidget as Aewyn did—Aewyn swung his feet, and his father had to put a hand on his knee and stop him. Aewyn heaved a heavy sigh, then, and meanwhile the old man had directed more incense be waved about.

Otter pinched a sneeze up his nose, and tried not to blink. Tears from the smoke shattered the candlelight. A baby began to fret, somewhere in the assembly, and other babies took it up, including the Princess, who let out a protesting wail.

Otter dared blink, finally, thinking the tears dry enough, and the light cleared into discrete, though blurry, points. There was a darkness between those points, and while the old man chanted, that dark in front of the front row, under the railing, seemed to move strangely, like spilled ink. The shadow began to run along the rail that separated the choir and the other priests from the assembly. It flowed down from there like black water, and ran down the baluster at the corner, spreading across the floor right by the table where the candles sat. Otter leaned forward a little and watched in horrid fascination.

Gran could do things like that, making sparks march in a line on a straw, or making a puddle of water go silver, reflecting the light. But this trick with shadow felt quite threatening to him, like a rip in the world that swallowed in the light, and if it was a trick, Otter wished the priests would stop doing that, and they would just preach and be done soon.

But there was more singing, and more incense waved about, until at last the old man, with all the shadow now swirling about his feet, talked about sin and the wickedness of their forebears, about the world being divided into the gods’ own and the others, and those trafficking in shadows, who were damned.

Maybe, Otter thought, it was a message, and now the shadow would disappear, driven away by the old man’s power. Maybe they were all supposed to understand it as a trick and an illustration. But the shadow was lapping and leaping about the hem of the old man’s robe, and he seemed not to notice it at all. He waded through it when he turned to the altar and poured a bowl of oil.

Otter’s skin began to prickle. The shadow didn’t go away. It coiled and sent out fingers up the old man’s robes.

“We have to be blessed, now,” Aewyn whispered, tugging at Otter’s sleeve, and in fact His Majesty moved out, and Ninévrisë with the baby, and the priest dipped his finger in the oil and touched their foreheads each in turn, calling them by their names and titles. The shadow underfoot diminished under his father’s feet and the queen’s, but Otter felt a lingering tightness at the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he might at any moment be sick if he had to step in it. Efanor followed the queen, being called Prince, and duke of Guelessar, which he was. The shadow stayed away, hiding under the railing.

“Us, now,” Aewyn said, dragging Otter with him out into the aisle, while the king and queen and Efanor filed back into the frontmost, vacant bench.

Otter caught a breath, stood still while the old man blessed Aewyn with the oil, calling him Crown Prince and heir of Ylesuin and forgiving his sins of the year.

Then the old man moistened his finger again, and Otter stared at it advancing toward him, not knowing what was happening at his feet, and had the terrible, awful, stinging urge to sneeze.

“Elfwyn,” the old man began.

He had to sneeze. He did, startling the old man backward.

A crash resounded off the pavings, a priest moved to catch it, a censer dropped and hit the edge of the altar. Coals skittered across the altar as the pitcher of oil went over the edge and hit the marble. Fire spread in a thin sheet as the old man recoiled, brushing at his gilt-and-white robes amid cries of alarm from the priests, who ripped loose cloths and hangings to smother it and save the man. A great outcry swelled from the crowd, the crash of a bench, as people surged out of their seats to see or to escape the vicinity. Otter stood frozen in place, while priests fell to their knees and mopped and smothered the fire with banners and clothes. The shadow was gone. The fire died, leaving a stench of singed cloth, incense, and oil.

The old man cleared his throat, lifted his hands and signaled the buzzing crowd to settle again, slowly restoring quiet.

Sweat had broken out on the old man’s face, and his hands shook as he turned and took another pitcher of oil. He poured a little into the bowl, atop the rest, and moistened his finger before he turned a sweating, disturbed countenance toward Otter.

“Elfwyn Aswydd,” the old man said, his true name, his mother’s name. “Do you stand to be blessed by the Holy Quinalt and written in the book?”

“Yes, sir,” he said in a shaking voice, forgetting in that instant that he was probably supposed to say Your Holiness, as Aewyn had, but then it was too late. The old man touched the oil to his forehead and said, all in a rush:

“Sealed to the Quinalt. Your sins are forgiven.”

The sins of Sight, and of running away into the rooftree and lying to Prince Efanor? Was he truly forgiven?

He walked away, glad to escape, at very least, half-blind to his surroundings as others, recovering from the commotion, got up to be blessed, the whole next row. It seemed a long, long way to walk before he found his place beside Aewyn, having gone all the way around the bench as Aewyn had done, to observe a respectful distance from the king and not to cross between him and the altar.

He breathed, every breath an effort. He shivered, trying not to let it be known.

“You did it,” Aewyn whispered, nudging him with an elbow, while the blessing went on, and they all stood. They stood all through the ceremony, until the priest had blessed the last of hundreds of them, and the choir sang, and dismissed them all, and the royal family led the way out into cold, wanly golden daylight.

Clean wind chilled them. Otter’s eyes stopped watering and his nose stopped stinging, but it still ran. He thought he would smell the stink of incense and fire for hours.

And the old man whose robes had caught—he had been so afraid the man was hurt, but he was not. He had gone on. And he was blessed. Forgiven. He was by no means sure he thought much of the Guelen gods, since Gran never had, but being forgiven was a good thing, was it not? And the shadow had gone. He felt as though he dared breathe again. He had done what his father wanted. They could write him in the book, with all the good people.

Today—he had figured it as best he could—even with delays because of the weather, Paisi should be across the river and onto the road on the other side, well on his way to Gran’s.

And Brother Trassin would be waiting for him in his rooms.

ix

THERE WERE USUAL PROCLAMATIONS TO ISSUE, A ROYAL APPROVAL ON A FIFTH daughter’s marriage in Carys—gods, was the man never out of daughters?— and the same from the current Lord Ryssand, no relation to the last, whose third-eldest son was the bridegroom: it required wax and the seal, but little thought. On this particular ill-starred day, Cefwyn wished there had been some distraction. At least the Patriarch had not gone up like a torch: he was, it was reported, a little singed, and in some pain, but nothing too serious.

“His Grace of Guelessar,” a servant advised him.

News, maybe. Maybe an assuagement of anxiousness that, along with a too-bland, too-fatty sausage, sat uneasily on the royal stomach since noon.

“Admit him.” Cefwyn blew out the sealing flame and tidied the unruly stack of stiff, beribboned parchments on his desk.

It was afternoon, verging on late afternoon. He had another dinner to face tonight, and could not imagine how he could get past the first course.

If Efanor reported matters in the Quinaltine solved, he might manage.

“Brother,” Efanor said, closing the door at his back. “I’ve talked to Idrys. I’ve just come from the Quinaltine, inspecting the matter myself. There is a mark. No scrubbing will remove it. There are scratches on the altar, which appear to the eye but not to the touch, and I have seen them. They reportedly spell out blasphemies.”

“Scratches that spell, for the gods’ sake! The boy sneezed. The old fool jumped back, and a fool priest was standing too close with the censer—what more might there be?”

“I did everything possible to quiet this—”

“I know, I know. I knew it was difficult when I asked it. But a simple sneeze, good gods!”

“His body could not tolerate the holy incense. The oil burned the holy banners rather than purge his sins…”

“And purged them right away and forever in the next moment, once the old fool got his wits collected, damn it all. Did anyone notice he did receive the oil with no difficulty, after?”

“The fire mark on the floor cannot be scrubbed away. There’s a permanent darkening of the stone.”

“Well, pry it up and lay a new paving stone, if His Holiness wants it. The boy was a model of decorum and gentility throughout. Your spy was with him all night and all morning previous. He took the oil. He sat through services. He did nothing but sneeze, gods save the day! What does the good brother say? That he flew about the room last night and conjured rats?”

“The boy had bad dreams and waked calling on Paisi and Gran, who the brother was relieved to know are living relatives.”

“Oh, for the gods’ own sake, brother!”

“There is gossip running among the priests. The Holy Father now has a fever. The curious come to see the scratches. Some see claw marks. Others see blasphemies.”

“Probably overzealous scrubbing,” Cefwyn said. “Claw marks, for gods’ sake! Claws that write. Do they observe good grammar?”

“The cracks are there, perhaps from the fire,” Efanor said. “Or not.”

Cefwyn shot back an angry look. “My son—my son, I say!—did not go there and scratch the precious floor. A censer fell. A priest dropped it. Fools have been scrubbing at the stone with all their might and now, lo! scratches appear. What a wonder! Gods, brother, you can argue with the arrant fools! Do it!”

“I have more concern than that,” Efanor said. “Remember the wars. Remember the Quinaltine—”

“Long quiet, and long settled.”

“It has been a battleground for spirits.”

“Years ago.”

“When the Sihhë last were abroad in the land.”

“He’s Aswydd, brother, not Sihhë.”

“Thin blood, but that blood, all the same, brother, you know it. The censer indeed fell.”

“The boy sneezed!”

“Or something there, once settled, does not like him there and wakes to notice.”

“Oh, I’m sure something there doesn’t like him. Someone among the priesthood doesn’t like his presence or the Aswydd name, and I’ll warrant there’s been talk in the robing rooms. It takes no spooks, brother, no ghosts, no haunts, just one ill-disposed servant of the gods… maybe not even the man who dropped the censer, rather than set His Holiness alight. Maybe the scratches came from someone who cleaned it up, someone opposed to me who found a chance to do ill, in all this to-do.”

“The boy has become a bone of contention.”

“And dogs will worry at any scrap. I’d expected conspiracy among the lords, not the priests.”

“Or the ghosts.”

“The ghosts, for the gods’ sake!”

“Ghosts, brother. I tell you plainly, it is not wise for him to go there again.”

“And next the priests will bruit about the notion he dares not come back!”

“Better let them gossip old news than another incident, which there may well be if he goes back. Have him take ill, have him fall on the stairs. He should not cross that threshold again until we unravel this.”

“Why don’t we fault the fool who dropped the fire in the first place! What did he dream the night before, does anyone ask that?”

“The Holy Father has taken to his bed in pain and fever. He is not at his most reasonable this afternoon. Caution. Caution in this. Remember Lord Tristen himself…”

It had unhappy resonance to that other crisis in the Quinalt, in which a Sihhë amulet had ended up in the offering plate.

And no one needed remind him that riots had broken out in the town over suspected Sihhë influence, killing his wife’s Bryaltine priest and no few others. Religious anger had divided the realm, had taken a war to settle…

And that war had roused horrid manifestations in the Quinaltine during the hour of the last battle. He had no reason to doubt Efanor’s report of it. The place had its ghosts, unquiet ones. It was not the only place in Ylesuin so blessed.

“Let me remind you, too,” Efanor said, “if the priests should begin to question his activities—the one item the Patriarch’s spy did report in the boy’s room was Nevris’ candle.”

Cefwyn turned a furious face on him, but Efanor, who was certainly no enemy of the queen, only set his jaw doggedly.

“I know you will not endanger her,” Efanor said. “Or the treaty. And if this Amefin son of yours does begin to endanger her, or to threaten the peace we forged—no, hear me out on this, brother—I know you will use your wits to find another path. What you owe this boy, what debt you have to him, and all your heir’s affection for him to the side—I pray you use your cleverness, not your will, in this case. Have your way and bring the boy along, but have it slowly. You knew the danger when you kept him here through Festival. You thought you could fly this young sparrow low and quickly past your enemies, have him entered in the rolls, and that the priests were in your hand. I had my misgivings. Yes, he is fair to look on, but he frowns too often. He has those eyes that some call Sihhë heritage. He is mysterious, and, forgive me, brother, your dalliance with the Aswydd duchess is—unfortunately—made new gossip by his arrival in a winter devoid of other topics.”

“Good loving gods, Efanor, there is no trouble from the woman!”

“We suppose that there is no trouble from her. The people have been reminded most vividly, now, that there is still a prisoner in the Zeide tower. They remember the dead sister, Orien. They remember the fall of the Aswydds, and your lifting your own ban to raise Lord Crissand, which roused some debate at the time. Amefel had settled far from Guelessar’s interest, until you brought this gray-eyed boy into the Guelesfort and made him your son for all to see. Now the people talk, and after this morning, they will talk in every shop and tavern.”

“I did not plan for an old fool to back into a censer pot!”

“You certainly planned for someone among the lords of the land to raise an objection in audience, which you were prepared to silence by this little maneuver in the Quinalt. You insisted on Festival, on the sacred season—”

“My son asked him here.”

“And you kept him on, full well knowing the delicacy of it.”

“I didn’t plan on fools!”

“Alas, fools grow like cabbages in Guelessar. But you know that, too. I can tell you nothing. I never could.”

Efanor was water, to his clenched fist, and it was a tactic that had long infuriated him. Sometimes Efanor was right in taking the devious course; but sometimes, too, Efanor backed away too quickly and encouraged fools with momentary success.

“Damn it,” Cefwyn said, “damn it, no, I refuse to send the boy home. Or to back off! Mend it! Find a stone, dead of night, replace the paving, replace the whole damned altar if you have to. Make a miracle. Let them chatter about that.”

“Stonemasonry raises noise and dust,” Efanor said, “and stonemasons talk. And one stone will not cure it. What has stirred in the Quinaltine, I fear, is beyond any mason to cure, now.”

“You believe it!” he exclaimed. “Good gods, you believe it!”

“I believe in what I saw the day of the battle. I believe there is a haunt there that roused itself once. I saw it…”

“Once. The whole world shook, that day. There were manifestations from end to end of Ylesuin, nothing since, here or there. Oh, come, this was no encroaching shadow. This was no howling wind. It was a sneeze, gods save us! It was a boy’s sneeze, and an old man’s foolishness. No. One thing will buff the scratches into abeyance. A glittering substance. Apply it.”

Efanor shook his head. “Be careful. Be careful with His Holiness, brother.”

“We are the Marhanen. We have ruled since there was a Guelessar, in spite of idle gossips and busy opinions and drawn daggers. You know what to do and where to apply the gold. In all of Guelessar, there has to be one fit stone, if enough gold moves it. In all of Guelessar, there has to be an altar cloth wide enough to cover whatever marks may appear. And if there aren’t priests willing to find a miracle in that, we can find more priests, too.”

Efanor drew a deep, deep breath. “As you will, brother. I shall see what I can do. I do not promise success. And find some excuse for the boy to stay abed tomorrow.”

“No, damn it, he will be with us in the morning. I don’t put it past certain priests to have caused this with exactly that aim. Make that suspicion clear to His Holiness and tell him that as I made him, so I can unmake him.”

“Not so easily, can you, and you know it.”

“Yet I can, and by the gods I will, rather than disavow a son of mine because some priest dropped a pot, gods damn his connivance! Tell him I take this as a personal affront, an intended incident, abetted by priests, and tell him count his zealots—one of them is in the midst of this.”

A second deep sigh. “I shall apply what suasion I can.”

“Good.” He caught Efanor’s arm. “You are a true brother.”

“I am also, and not by my will, the boy’s uncle. The boy’s honest and devoted uncle, brother of mine. I made my own mistakes in youth, less fortunate even than this one. I devote myself now to amends.”

“What sin did you ever commit?”

Efanor turned one of those rare and pained looks that he had worn ever since a day in Amefel.

“Our father’s loss? That was none of your doing. The fault is mine. By the gods, I refuse to have you carry my faults about. You are not to be that pure, brother of mine, without being a damned saint, and I won’t have it, by the gods I won’t!”

“Oh, we have each our flaws. Marhanen and Aswydd. I could never have achieved that. Gods save us, what a breeding!”

He glared. Efanor gave a little bow, a very little bow, and walked off toward the door, having had the last and telling word, which only vexed him the more.

Sometimes, however, the Marhanen luck simply held out against all odds, blind, deaf, and dumb. He had ridden to battle with it, time and again. It never worked in his favor when he retreated.

And was this boy, half of his blood, not due a share of that luck?

Otter would not be found hiding among the cobwebs tomorrow.

And if Efanor had to rouse out and bribe a score of stonemasons, there would be a miracle. Let the masons talk: let them proclaim in every tavern in town that they had replaced the stone. The people loved their miracles more than truth, and what appeared suddenly to set things right roused passions that paid no heed to rational explanations. He had learned the ways of the faithful, while the object of his own personal belief was across the border, beyond Amefel, and at present gave him no answers.

i

THE BOY WAS FEARFUL OF GOING BACK: EFANOR SAW THAT, WHEN THE FAMILY gathered before dawn for the morning processional. Aewyn attempted to cheer him, but the boy, Otter—Elfwyn Aswydd, as he was written, now, in the holy record—looked apprehensively into the shadows of the hall and started in every limb when a guardsman thumped a pike against the paving.

They moved, out into a snowy, breathless dawn, and across a soft new blanket of snow in the courtyard and on the street. Only a few earlier tracks marred the white.

They climbed the broad, sparsely torchlit steps toward the open doors and entered the sanctuary as they must do every morning of Festival. And here Efanor climbed a little faster, and seized Otter’s arm and diverted him and Aewyn to the bench behind the king and queen, in much better view of the aisle, and of the lords who filled the benches. The Lord Chamberlain, flustered, filled in the next bench after with his family, and others moved smoothly into place, none noticing, perhaps, until the last row, when some might be left standing: no one sat in the king’s row unbidden; and no one had dared crowd into the Prince’s company in his appropriated row, either. Everything had gone just slightly out of joint.

But Efanor, nearest the aisle now, had placed the boys where he could keep an eye on both of them—Aewyn, he would gladly have sent forward with Cefwyn, so as not to taint the heir with his half brother’s difficulties. He signaled so, but Aewyn, who had stuck like a burr when he had diverted the Aswydd boy, now ignored the urging to join his parents and stuck fast, publicly attached to the scene, making himself a hostage.

Well, Efanor thought, that was as it would be. The masons, paid for silence as well as labor, had done their work last night. A new stone, inconspicuous among the rest, lay in place, unblemished. The altar there was no replacing, but a broad white altar cloth covered the damages. Everything to the public eye was pristine and perfect.

He had gotten perhaps four hours of sleep last night. Otter beside him looked to have gotten less. The lad’s face was white, lips pressed tight.

Cefwyn seemed perfectly happy, his requirements satisfied, his sons in place, the people quiet in the contemplation of the third day, the day of thanksgiving, happier than the day of fasting and the day of forgiveness. They had only the day of petition and the day of praise to get through, beyond this one—and if Cefwyn could draw an easier breath this morning, confident in his deafness to things that might move in the shadows—it at least kept his face serene as a monarch’s ought to be.

Efanor felt no such serenity, nor would, he thought, until the sun rose on the world and shadows slunk back to their proper places.

It was always an uneasy place. Lord Tristen had said it was the Masons who had laid out the foundations, who had deliberately built on a place of power, and attempted—arrogantly—to contain it. But could anyone persuade the Holy Father to let Tristen Sihhë redraw the Lines beneath? No, a thousand times no.

Consequently the conflicting Lines were still there, more gateway than ward. They had flared into life that day of battle and outright broken, badly knit again by the persistent pacing of the Holy Father and other priests, back and forth, back and forth along that track before the altar. It was a ragged line they made, like loose scraps of yarn laid for a defense, not the bright, brave blue that attended Tristen’s sure working—the mending of the Lines had started out as bits of red, then green, where they crossed, and a few, now, blue in the heart of the skein, showed a certain health.

But to Efanor’s disquiet, if he looked in the right way, a shadow seemed to have fallen on the heart of the new paving stone, which the Masons had raised from the inner chapel floor and brought out here. Masons had trimmed it, chisels ringing in the dim, vacant hours; they had set it, pure and gray and polished, and cleaned away the dust.

Now a spot appeared, and spread like ink in water, right by the king’s bench, right by Cefwyn’s left hand.

It was not a spot such as ordinary Men might see, not yet: the choir sang, the congregation rose and sat by turns, but spread it did, and sent out tendrils of stain to touch other stones, running like ink in the crevices between stones. The white altar cloth seemed to glow with a red fire, as if coals were under the cloth, never blackening, only continuing to glow, a mis-set Line.

No one saw, Efanor thought to himself; not a soul else noticed it.

But when he thought that, he felt a strange thing: that fear sat beside him: not mischief, not a source of the darkness, but fear.

The boy was gazing at the floor beside the bench, his lips pressed to a thin line. Sweat stood on his face.

Efanor shot out a hand without forethought, gripped the boy’s wrist, and pressed that cold flesh, gently, solidly, feeling, still, neither emanation of the threat nor an answering defense. It was a very mortal chill, the shiver of a soul completely vulnerable to the threat it perceived, and knowing not what to do.

He had force enough. Efanor had discovered it in him on that day, call it prayer, call it a Working, in Tristen’s terms: he had prayed, then, not to the Five, but to justice, and fairness, and to the balance that kept the living in possession of the hill: he prayed now for the lives of all those present, all the city round about, for his duchy of Guelessar, for all the realm, all weighed against the dead, and whatever force tried to break those Lines that held the shadow back.

Shadow pressed back. The blue Lines turned red, and gold, and a few snapped. The boy shivered, and flinched, and Efanor loosened his grip somewhat, praying with all his might, lips moving now. The boy’s other hand closed atop his, circle closed, force running through all the boy’s being, and Efanor locked his left hand atop all, willing safety on the lot of them, on all present.

The Lines held. What he held, what he met, in that completed grip, tingled through him in a way he had rarely felt.

It held. It held through the singing and the Holy Father’s sermon, the old man talking on and on about thanksgiving for deliverance from sins, and uttering inanities, outright inanities about birth indicating a soul’s righteousness and rank being given by the gods.

What rank, this boy? Efanor wondered, distracted. What holiness, this lad, the bastard, whose presence this place abhors?

Whose life this place fears…

It fears him, fears the Aswydd blood. The old enemy, is it, you shadows?

The Marhanen lie buried here, Efanor thought: my father, my grandfather, the queens, the forgotten princes, those who never reigned, and those who did—my grandfather who slaughtered the Sihhë-lords and overthrew their palaces… who suborned the Aswydds in the doing of it, but the Aswydds were never the object of the attack and never suffered what their lords did. The Aswydds ruled on, under special provision, with their own peculiar titles and honors preserved—the Aswydds still rule, by Cefwyn’s own dispensation.

Aswydd blood can’t be the disturbance here.

Something else is.

A howling wind seemed to go through the sanctuary, up among the banners, but none of the audience stirred. The boy, however, looked up, candlelight reflecting in his eyes. The boy had heard it. The boy had felt it.

Had he heard some threat yesterday, when the censer fell?

There had been a thunderclap in that moment, in Efanor’s ears. Thunder in the snowfall, that no one seemed to have heard, only the fall of the censer, the ringing of metal, the racket of the congregation all out of their seats, striving to see…

“Good lad,” Efanor whispered, under the singing. “Good lad.”

A desperate look turned to him. The boy’s hands were like ice. Beyond, Aewyn had looked aloft, and cast them a worried look, as if perceiving some trouble beyond his ken.

“You should not come here,” Efanor said to the boy in his grip. “I know that. I shall talk to your father.”

“My lord.” The boy tried to withdraw one hand, and Efanor let him, retaining only a hold on his wrist.

“I shall see you safely out of here, when the congregation rises. Walk quietly. I shall keep close by.” Efanor let go the boy’s wrist as the congregation rose. He slipped an arm around him instead, and when Cefwyn and Ninévrisë began the procession, drew him into the aisle, proceeding together behind the king and queen, down the long walk toward the opening doors. Aewyn came up on Otter’s other side, and put his arm about him, the image of familial devotion as they came out the doors.

It was surely more familial devotion than Cefwyn might want displayed, making clear to all the witnessing crowd outside that here was the Aswydd sorceress’s son, the family mistake, in the very heart of the family, embraced by both generations. Cefwyn might not see the shadows running the aisles like spilled ink, might not feel the bands of terror loosed from about his ribs as they passed the doors or see the sunlight as the cleansing force it was.

Otter must not go there again, Efanor said to himself, shaken. He must not go there. Cefwyn’s will or no, he dares not.

He slipped his hand from the boy’s shoulder then, letting Aewyn and Otter go their way in the mistaken blitheness of boys, the darkness inside now past. They made a game of walking together through the snow as they reached the bottom of the steps, kicking it into flurries.

Boys, still. Boys whose fates rested in other hands than their own—

In the hands of grown men, who had to act with the limited understanding they had; and Efanor turned back forthwith toward the Quinaltine, taking an untracked walk toward the priests’ door, along the side of the building, where a wintry, snowy hedge concealed his visit from common view.

He opened the unlocked door, walked into the close, echoing warren that held the private chapels, the robing rooms, the wardens’ chambers, and the storerooms that supplied the less public aspects of the Quinaltine services. He climbed up a flight of narrow steps, and into His Holiness’ less public domain, where the Holy Father, the Patriarch, was shedding the heavy gold miter. His sparse white hair had wisped up into random peaks. He looked like any old man caught in dressing, except for the golden raiments, except for priests and lay brothers who raced up to him to ask questions and receive instructions, departing again at a run. It was a hive overturned, buzzing with distress and worry.

“Your Holiness,” Efanor said.

“Your Grace, the spot is back. It’s back, it’s on the new stone, and it’s larger. The whole city will see the mark!”

“Shut the doors.”

“Shut the doors? It’s Thanksgiving, the day before Praise. I have another service to hold in an hour, and the commons at eventide. We can’t shut the doors!”

“We’ve other stones. We’ll lay another stone. The services will be late today.”

“What will we tell the populace?”

“Tell them anything. Lie. Decry excessive drunkenness in the crowd. Say you’ve taken ill. But shut the doors!”

He turned on his heel and left a royal order hanging in the air. The Patriarch might send to the king to confirm it; and he had to reach his brother beforehand.

He lost no time at all, crossing between the Quinaltine and the Guelesfort. Unlike his brother, he moved at times without guard or escort, and this was notably such a moment, in which his plain raiment and his haste was disguise enough, given the sifting fall of snow. The crowd in the square was waiting to be let into services that would, alas, be hours delayed. The guardsmen closing the Guelesfort gate realized who he was and let him pass.

He left melting snow behind him as he climbed the servants’ stairs, up to the level of the royal apartments and straight down the hall… past the boy’s rooms, and past Aewyn’s, straight for his brother’s.

But not without interception. A black-clad guardsman checked him with a hand on his arm, right near his brother’s door.

Idrys.

“Your Grace,” the Lord Commander said in a low voice. “I take it that it was not without disturbance.”

“No,” he said, “it was not.”

ii

IT WAS A VISITATION OF ILL OMEN: CEFWYN SAW IT COMING——EFANOR, PASSING the guard at his chamber doors with no lingering courtesies, went straight to the point, just when the Lord Chamberlain had begun a report, and asked for complete privacy.

“The mark is back,” Efanor said directly.

“No such thing!” Cefwyn said. “I looked. I saw nothing at all.”

“Some see it. Some, among the priests, the Holy Father—as well as your Aswydd son—do. I see it. It will manifest again. I’ve ordered the doors shut, the stone replaced. Your miracle, brother, has failed; worse, it’s gone wrong. All through the service, I was with the boy…”

“Who did nothing!”

“I will warrant myself, by deed or word or invocation, he did nothing— but what he saw, and what I saw, brother—”

“These Lines.”

“You’ve seen them yourself. I know you can see them.”

“I agree they’re there. Once and twice, yes, I’ve seen them elsewhere, in darkest night. Why should we be so blessed this time? And why should it be the boy’s fault? Why not one of the priests doing this?”

“I don’t at all deny that it could be. But the fact is, other things manifest when the boy is there. They frighten him, and what I saw there this morning frightens me. Listen this time, brother. Whatever the cause, for the boy’s sake, for yours, the boy must not go through those doors again.”

Master Crow had come in, sole exception to the request for utter privacy, and stood by, arms folded, the last man on earth who might see mysterious Lines or give way to superstition; but he, like Efanor, had seen far more unaccountable things in his life.

“My lord king,” Idrys said unbidden, “consider, not alone the boy’s mother, but the mother’s sister. Born at a sorceress’s will—”

“You are about to offend me, Crow.”

“Sorcery brought you into the Aswydd’s bed, sorcery conceived a son you will not now disavow—on what advice, yes, has generally been good advice, but Lord Tristen never counseled you to bring that boy into the Quinalt, my lord king. I would wager heavily on that. This was your own notion.”

“Damn you, Crow!”

“Oh, I’ll deserve it more before I’m done speaking. What you do, you do broad and far. You were a wild and froward boy. You are a generous and occasionally excessive man, where it touches your demonstrations of the gentler sentiments: love me, love my boys, or be damned to you all. Do I mistake your intent to press popular sentiment to the wall? You appointed the Holy Father: you can unseat him if he crosses you—but you’ll come to me to do the deed. Oh, I do serve you, my lord king, but His Grace has warned you, and I warn you. I miss Master Grayfrock. He’d mince no words. You find yourself hell-bent on a course that will destroy you—wizards are in it. And is there not a smell of wizardry about this boy? Say no, and I’ll know for a certainty you’re bespelled, my lord king.”

It was one of Crow’s better speeches. It left Cefwyn silent, except to say:

“You advised me drown him at birth.”

“I don’t think I specified the method, my lord king, but I did foresee this moment.”

“So did His Majesty,” Efanor said, “or he’d not have been so stubborn in this matter.”

“Damn both of you! This is not for jest!”

“You brought this boy in,” Idrys said in measured tones, “while I was otherwise occupied. You had no wish to hear my opinions on the matter. But being here now, I give them, gratis.”

“If I’m ever cut, Idrys will bring salt, will he not?”

“The boy,” Efanor said, “has no ill will, nor malice in him, nor practices anything unwholesome. He is innocent, and as Emuin would say, worse than that, he is ignorant. That said, this morning proves he has the Gift, in what measure I cannot tell—but enough: enough to make him a door through which Tarien Aswydd can look into this place, if not enter. The Quinaltine dead are roused… to what, I cannot say. It was no simple sneeze that hurled that censer to the stones. It was a struggle between what thin line protects the Quinaltine and what forces would bring utmost harm on you, on the queen, and on both your sons.”

“No.”

“Hear me. In him, Tarien has what she still lusts after: power. You always meant to take him from his mother. You snatched him from her at birth, you instructed him to fear her. But you had no power to break her desire for him.”

“What would I, kill her and loose another ghost?”

“What will you? Disinherit Crissand’s sons and install this boy as the Aswydd?”

“No. That is not my intent.”

“No place for him, then, in Amefel, where he might live. What shall you teach him to be, then? A captain of the Guard? He can’t ride, or fence. A cleric, perhaps! An Aswydd cleric!”

“If I wanted him a cleric, I’d send him to the Teranthines.”

“If we could find one. Their shrines stand vacant. And even they would fear him. For what do you prepare this boy?”

“I am making a lasting peace between my sons, exactly the reverse of our father’s intent for us.”

“Sons defy their fathers’ wishes. What, when your sons defy yours?”

He could argue with Master Crow. Crow only vexed him. Efanor had a way of cutting deeper, touching his fear for Nevris, for his daughter, and his son, in for the likelihood that Aswydd sorcery had indeed some purpose for his long-ago misdeeds, and revenge as its object. His stomach was upset, and for a moment he averted his face from the arguments, standing, arms folded, face to the windows.

“The boy should go home,” Idrys said.

“Crow.” The Marhanen temper threatened to get the better of him. “Time you left.”

“He’s done all you wished,” Efanor said. “He’s forgiven and blessed, and written in the holy record. And if his gran, as we have now established with Brother Trassin, is ill—if she should get worse—if there were a messenger to arrive with dire news, if the boy were simply to fly home to his gran, as a consequence of such a missive, it would be a great success he has achieved here. Would it not? There would be an explanation for his departure. And talk would die down.”

Cefwyn let go a long, difficult breath.

“I like the boy,” Efanor said. “He has admirable qualities.”

“We are not burying him, damn it all! He will be back!”

“Indeed.” Idrys had not gone away as requested. Cefwyn looked at him, where Idrys leaned, long arms folded, against the royal writing desk. “The stench of fire in the sanctuary is too evident, my lord king. And if we strip another stone from the chapel, and another, why, the priests will pray on bare earth by snowmelt.”

“Aewyn will be in mourning,” Cefwyn said.

“And what ever endeared itself to a boy’s heart like the forbidden?” Efanor asked. “Separate them, and they’ll fly together.”

“And hate me for it.”

“The boy is worried about his gran. This is my advice. Satisfy that. Let a message call the boy home now. Then bring him back in fat, lazy summer, when the streets are dusty and people are in more generous humor. Let the people see him out in the country, hunting with Aewyn, attending harvest dances, and playing pranks like boys, not—not visiting the Quinaltine at the hinge of the year, when everything is at odds. Let the people see his better qualities.”

“Shall I tell you how he misled the stablemaster?” Idrys said smoothly. “Wit and guile together. Those are important qualities.”

Cefwyn’s fist hit the table nearest. “You have what you want, damn you, Crow. And if it’s bad influence you want, you’re sending him closest to it.”

“You will be sending him back to Paisi’s gran, with due warning, and a little wiser about the wide world. In all these years, he’s been safe there.”

“I’ll want to know the rumors out of Amefel,” Cefwyn said, “with no salt or sauce on them.”

“That you shall,” Idrys said. “But nearer at hand, there is the spy the Holy Father settled in the boy’s rooms. That man should be fed a careful diet in the next few hours—for the Holy Father’s benefit.”

“I’ll see to it,” Efanor said.

“Feed him what you like,” Cefwyn said to Efanor’s departing back, “but get him out the Guelesfort doors within the hour. And you may tell the Holy Father that the Quinalt will resolve this matter, or their king will be offended. We are well certain that through lack of zeal on their part—perhaps even conspiracy against us, for political reasons—they have damaged the stones and attempted this threat to the Crown.”

Efanor stopped dead. “I would hesitate at this point to declare war on the Holy Father.”

“The Holy Father will not have my ear, I say, until this business is smoothed over. I’m sure you can state that position with sufficient diplomacy.”

“Shall I advise the boy to prepare?” Efanor asked,

Cefwyn shook his head and cast a look at Idrys. “One of your men can contrive a message from Amefel. Do that first. Let him come into the hall, spread gossip in the kitchens, the usual thing.”

“Whenever my lord king commands,” Idrys said.

“He is my son, damn you. My son, who is nowhere at fault in this. Dispatch your messenger, let that damned spy see it when you deliver it—I fear the boy will have to believe it at least for an hour. I’ll tell the boy the truth directly before supper. Arrange an escort to leave with him, before daybreak tomorrow.”

“My lord king,” Idrys said, grimly satisfied. Efanor said nothing, only left.

iii

OTTER HAD NO APPETITE FOR FOOD. THE LAY BROTHER HAD SET A TRAY DOWN on the table and taken a certain amount back to his little chamber, where he ate and drank as if there were no spot on the Quinaltine floor and no shadow there.

Otter’s stomach knew otherwise. Aewyn had dined with his mother this noon, and asked him to come, too; but he had no desire to sit at table with the queen asking him questions he would not know how to answer.

Was it better today? Her Majesty might ask.

No, he would have to say, if he were honest.

And: What troubles you? she might ask, which was worse, because the dreams were back, just behind his eyelids, whenever he shut his eyes at all, now. He saw fire, firelight on snow, and Henas’amef sitting on its hill, and a trail leading through snowy woods.

He saw Gran’s house as all blackened sticks.

Doors opened and closed. He supposed Brother Trassin had taken his noon dishes out himself, though the man had done little else, and fed himself prodigiously, to judge by the size of the tray he had taken to his rooms.

In time, the man came back from the kitchens. Otter was reading at the time, and only noted it, and kept reading, trying to lose himself in the words.

But the poetry had failed to hold him. It was all about spring and flowers, and outside his windows, snow was coming down again, thick and wild, piling up on the sills—

Snow would be falling, likewise, in Amefel, across the river. Snow would put out fires. Gran was never careless with fires. She never had been.

Brother Trassin came to the doorway of the room with a rolled paper in hand.

“Pray to the gods,” the brother said. “Bad news, poor boy. Very bad news.”

He didn’t understand, at first, what the brother meant. But he laid his book aside on the table. “Sir?” he asked, rising.

“This has come,” Brother Trassin said, and handed him an opened document, its two seals already cracked, two shades of red wax. “I have the greatest concern, boy, the greatest concern for you.”

He was puzzled. He understood he was to read the paper, and held it so the window’s light shone through it. It was from a military clerk’s hand. It said, beyond the opening and name of the Guelen clerk, that a guardsman who had visited Gran had come to the Guelesfort at midafternoon with a spoken message, which was rendered here as the guardsman said it and meant to be delivered to him.

The woman is very ill. She urgently wants her grandson at her side.

It was hardly Gran’s way of saying things, or even a soldier’s, but it had evidently come through a clerk, and the words would have changed. There was, appended to the bottom of the paper another statement, from the Commander of the Dragon Guard: His Majesty excuses you from services.

Somehow—not by the ordinary way messengers came and went—this had gotten into Trassin’s hands. The broken seals—the first was plain, but the second looked like an official seal, with the Dragon on it, in red wax, said that Trassin had read it.

Fear made his stomach upset. He felt a profound shock and all the same, he was angry.

“How did you get this?”

“From the Lord Commander, in your name, boy, as in care of you.”

“And read it? How long have you had it?”

“Dear boy!”

“How long have you had it?”

“Just now I got it. I was in the kitchens. The Guard is forming an escort for you, in the early hours. They are calling up the horses and packing for the journey. They will escort you out before the sun, back to Amefel, to deliver you back into Lord Crissand’s lordship and lose no time about it. I heard this, and went to the Prince, who confirmed it, and I came here, to bring you the message myself, poor boy.”

A message from Gran would have passed Paisi on the road and Paisi would be with her by now. Paisi would be seeing to her welfare. She would be well by now. There was surely no reason to worry—this was at least three days old. Or more than that. And his father knew it, and was sending him with an escort of soldiers—

“Your dreams,” Brother Trassin said, “your dreams of misfortune must have some unhappy foundation in fact, and, poor boy, this instruction is in error. You cannot hope to help your gran. You have your own soul to save, you are written in the book, here you are on the verge of bettering yourself, and this woman sends after you, I can only imagine with what influence at work. I can appeal to the Holy Father—”

“I shall pray for my gran, sir.” His mouth could scarcely shape words that might mollify this man, and he had no idea what to say. Brother Trassin had spoken to him very little except to pray over him, and now wanted to advise him not to go, and he had no idea what his father was about, unless—unless they knew of some reason Paisi hadn’t gotten there.

He wanted to fling the missive down, to run, as fast as he could for better advice. But this man had already been to His Grace. Where was there, but Aewyn? And Aewyn would know nothing, not about messages that came through the Lord Commander.

“Pray for yourself, poor boy. Let me counsel you, your gran’s country witchcraft may seem innocent, but it will drag you down to a deeper well of corruption, by ever so little steps, if you listen to wicked dreams. Sorcery wants you back, but you must not go. Your whole upbringing is out of wizardry and worse. Sorcery wants you. Fires, the fires you dream of at night, boy—those are the fires of hell.”

His heart beat faster. “What about the fires?” His own dream from last night eluded him, increasingly, hiding details and fading from his grasp: Brother Trassin had waked him and sent it scattering and fading in the shock of being wakened. “What did I say last night?”

“ ‘Gran,’ you cried, and ‘the fire, the fire in the wood.’ And when I waked you, you looked about as if you were there, not here, and you shouted aloud, ‘Watch out for the beam,’ as if you were seeing something not present. These dreams are devil-sent, boy, I know they are. And I told you that you should get up immediately and pray to stop them, but you said go away. So I did. I did, but I did pray for you, boy, and I had the utmost reason, in your refusal.”

“It was just a dream, was all.” He tried to believe that, and to argue rationally with the man. “This is a message from my gran. It came by horse, not devils!”

Even if my father knows something different.

“Devils, I say, devils. The gods never sent you these persistent dreams of fire and harm. The devils do. They called away the witch’s grandson. He had no trouble answering. And if you fall into these visions, and go back to that benighted province, I fear for you. You have not the strength on your own to fight these influences. And think of this—think of this, boy. If the gods do take your grandmother, it may be in time to turn your soul from ruin and save her soul from worse sin. Mark me, boy: the gods in their mercy may have wished to save the young soul who lived under that roof, but you have to turn from your mother’s wicked ways. The gods will not forgive a willful lapse, boy. The gods’ retribution may be delayed, but not…”

“No,” he cried a second time, and struck out, knocking the precious book of poetry to the floor. “My gran heals her neighbors. Her spells heal or find lost things!”

“Her healing is a false healing. Her knowledge is blasphemous. The gods’ prerogatives are not for ignorant hands to use.”

“Go away!” he cried. “Just leave, damn you! Don’t come back!”

“If I do go, I take the gods’ mercy with me. It may be forever, boy!”

“Get out!” He moved toward Brother Trassin, to shove him bodily out of the rooms, but Brother Trassin mistook his intent and abandoned his stance in haste, crying,

“Violence! Gods save us from devils!”

Brother Trassin fled through the arch, across the sitting room, out the door and slammed it.

Otter stood shaking beside the table, unable to prevent the man from spreading lies or offer reason to silence him. Trassin was the Patriarch’s man, and bent on damning him with the priests of the Quinalt and with Prince Efanor and now with every devout Quinaltine, because this man, Efanor had warned him, was here for that very purpose. Priests had power. He had seen that, in the king’s anxiousness to have him please the Quinalt and have his name written in the book, and now everything must have gone wrong. Priests in the Quinaltine might have seen the spot on the floor, and the shadows, and the lines of fire that had grown up during services; Efanor had gripped his hand: he could see them, too, though nobody else had seemed to notice… he had thought he had gotten away safely, escaped the harm and left it all behind.

But his dream pursued him. The letter advised him that Gran was desperate—or that his father had realized what was in the sanctuary hated him. The Five Gods surely hated him and wanted him out of their sanctuary, was it not clear? His father’s gods wanted nothing to do with sorcery, or the Aswydds, or him. They were going to send him out with soldiers, in the dead of night, when dark things should be abroad.

And now that man ran down the Guelesfort halls crying out about devils and violence, and the report would get to the Quinaltine, and it would be bad. If he stayed to argue, or got into some tangle between his father and the priests and the soldiers—and who knew what had happened to delay Paisi, or if he had gotten there at all?—Gran might die alone.

Beware this man, his uncle had said, pinning great importance on it, and he had failed to mollify Brother Trassin. Trassin was his enemy, things in the Quinaltine had gone wrong, Efanor had probably told his father, and everything had collapsed in ruin. He would be lucky if he ever saw Aewyn until they both were men, and by then they might be enemies, as Guelenfolk tended to be toward Amefin.

Gods save Gran, he thought. Tears made the room swim. And he was too distraught to face Aewyn before he left, or to try to explain. His father would hear a worse report from the priests than he had already gotten. Aewyn might protest, but his father would lay down the law and run him out at night, for fear of appearances, and he just had to go, that was all. He had to.

He went straight back to the clothespress, took his second-best cloak, wrapped up all his changes of linen, all the food laid out on the table in that, and his outdoor boots, and put on his third-best cloak.

That was all he took. The Quinalt amulet, he laid on the table. It was Prince Efanor’s, and it was silver, and he would not be accused of stealing it. For the rest, he tucked up the bundle under his cloak and left, only hoping to all the kindlier and more numerous Bryaltine gods that no one noticed him. He headed not toward the west, the stable side of the Guelesfort, but down the eastern servants’ stairs, and out the eastern door.

Then he crossed along by the iron fence and the hedges, in what had begun to be a thick snowfall. He ignored the hulking shadow of the Quinaltine that loomed above, and when he passed the outward bow of the building, into the little courtyard, he refused to look toward the windows of the second story, either, one of which was his father’s.

He had to brave the stables, all the same, so he took care not to be seen at all as he came around the western flank of the keep, and approached the stable fences. He kept his head down and his face shadowed by the hood as he slipped along the outer fence into the stable itself, where the few courier horses and the king’s own horses alone had not gone down to pasture. In the near dark of the interior he lifted a plain leather halter and ordinary lead rope from its peg beside the nearest stall, ignored the inquisitive blazed nose that poked out to sniff the air around the theft, and was gone out the door again, down by the main Guelesfort gate, which was, by day, not usually shut.

Here he expected to pretend to be a serving boy on an errand; but the guards were inside the guardhouse, out of the weather, and paid no attention as he simply walked out.

In the town streets, he lengthened his stride, taking only moderate care to keep his head down and keep the wind from blowing the hood half-back. He kept the cloak clutched about him and the halter and the large bundle under it, and hoped for at least as much luck as he entered the lower city and approached the town gates.

Here, too, the thick snow obscured a mere straggle of farmerfolk and craftsmen going in and out on ordinary business. He simply walked close in the tracks of a pair of craftsmen, head bowed. With them, he passed beyond the gates, out onto the road that led through a scattered few craftsmen’s dwellings, past a few fences, and then took a brisk stride along beside snowy winter orchards and fields and pasturages, leaving other traffic behind. Oxen and cattle huddled near haystacks, or in the lee of shelter walls. He saw horses in pasture, a few, but he had his mind set on one horse, the one to which he had some legitimate claim, at least, not to be called a thief.

He wished he had been able to bring Paisi’s own bridle, and most of all his saddle, which were stored in the tack room up above. But that had been too great a risk, and someone would have stopped him. He hoped the halter would fit, or that he could make it fit. He was cold to the bone, and his feet were numb by the time he reached that pasture where Tammis ranged. The sky was gray and the whole world else was white, and he feared that no sensible creature would come to a call in this weather. He stepped through the rails and trudged out into the midst of the pasture. They had learned a whistle for Tammis—none worked on Feiny—and when he whistled into the blowing wind, once and three times, then he saw, indeed a dark head come out of the little copse of trees a distance away.

He had no apple for a bribe, but in his bundle he had honey sweets he had saved from the table, and when Tammis had nosed up to him, he could deliver a small offering.

He slipped the lead-line over Tammis’s neck to be sure of him while he was enjoying his treat, and cold-numb fingers managed, with some little difficulty, to get the ill-fitting, cold-stiff halter over the piebald’s poll and settled behind his ears.

Then he could lead Tammis toward the gate. Tammis had no notion he was being stolen. He went cheerfully enough. There was little else he could give him, he knew, but the bread, if a horse would eat it. And how they should feed him when he reached Gran’s, not to mention his own horse’s appetite, he had no idea. He supposed he should take both Feiny and Tammis up the hill once he got home and turn them over to Lord Crissand, praying him to send them home to his father, so he and Paisi should not be obliged any further.

The thought hurt. He wanted not to think that far ahead.

He was careful to close the gate once he had passed it. The horsemaster had lectured him and Paisi very strictly about gates, as if he and Paisi had not come to Guelessar knowing that already, regarding Gran’s goats, who could manage most latches for themselves.

And there, in the snowy lane, he seized Tammis’s shaggy mane, poised himself, and vaulted for his back, bundle and all, the way the stableboys did. The first attempt, encumbered by the bundle, he slid right off Tammis’s rump and woolly side, but it was close enough to encourage him: the second try, in which he brought Tammis close to the fence and shifted his bundle to the hand that gripped the mane and the rein, let him make a leap, wriggle his knee across Tammis’s well-padded backbone, and thence ease astride, Tammis being a fairly patient horse.

Off they went, then, Tammis ambling along in no great hurry at first, then warming into a jog that kept them both warm. They reached the highroad, and Tammis was sure at that point that they would be going north, toward town, but he reined him about in a wide circle and turned southward, as the merchants traveled, with no one in sight north or south, in the threatening weather.

He had gotten away clear. He was going home, the same way Paisi had gone, and he would keep faith with Gran, at least. If she wanted him to go back again, he would tell Gran that the ways of Guelessar were not for him, that he was homesick, that he might see his brother later, on his regular visit—all such excuses as he could contrive.

And maybe his father would indeed come riding past with Aewyn as they always had, and maybe after much of a year had passed, they could exchange greetings and he could pay his respects to his father and patch things as if nothing very bad had happened.

Or maybe there would only be soldiers, to collect the horses, and bid him stay away from Guelessar forever, since he had done things so badly and made trouble with the priests. That notion, which he thought more likely, settled like a leaden weight in his chest.

He had dreamed of Guelessar in his childhood, and thoroughly enjoyed his first days in the Guelesfort, oh, so full of wonders; and with Aewyn for his friend. But they had taken a dark turn in the Quinaltine, at Festival, and he had no wish to see all the good memories go sour, or do further harm to his father’s reputation or to Aewyn’s. He wished no one ill—wished no harm, even to Brother Trassin, who had wanted to pray for him and save his soul, but he felt the urgent need, for this hour, to be far from here as fast as he could persuade Tammis to travel before the tangle grew deeper and darker. He just had to get home and be sure Gran was all right.

What he would do then—then, and forever afterward, he had no scrap of a notion. He had planned everything toward Guelessar, toward his father. Now he found himself not quite a man and no longer a child—even his time with Gran had become perilous, perhaps on the verge of passing. She was very old, and frail, and he and Paisi both knew she might leave them someday soon.

Then what? Then what, and where?

And what will I be, if I come home too late this time?

Gran had sent him out to find his fortune. His time with Aewyn, and among the books, had all been aimed at growing up and becoming a man who could support the family: Aewyn had been so convinced they would grow up together, and be allies, and now all that plan was gone, he began to realize it was not Otter the child who was coming home to Gran. Otter had grown up in his winter in Guelessar, grown up and gone away and looked to have very grown-up men angry with him and fearful of him.

Lord Crissand might not be as well-disposed as before, either.

Where was safety for them, then?

Tammis’s hooves found packed snow in a track where carts had passed, and thumped along good-naturedly, his breath frosting on the wind. Snow turning his shaggy mane white. Tammis carried him home, not at all the Otter who had left, but another creature altogether, one he hoped had, on this last day, grown warier and become harder to catch.

iv

IT COULD NOT BE TRUE. IT COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE, WHAT THE BODYGUARDS whispered among themselves.

“Who said Otter should go away?” Aewyn asked, breaking into his guards’ privacy in the little chamber in the hallway and standing squarely in the door.

The men—grown men, his father’s men—were all caught, and there was no graceful way to dislodge him without answering his questions.

“Your Highness,” Selmyn, seniormost, said, with a grave manner, “we very much regret to be the bearers of news His Majesty surely wished to deliver…”

“Why would my father send him away,” Aewyn cried, “when my father brought him here in the first place?”

“There seems to be some trouble,” Selmyn said, “Your Highness.”

“What trouble? What trouble would it be?”

“We don’t know,” Selmyn said, red-faced, clearly embarrassed. “But word is out that he has to leave—there’s a Guard contingent to ride escort tomorrow morning, Dragon Guard, Your Highness. He was to go to Amefel before the sun comes up. And watchers we know are running up and down the stairs in some haste.”

“The hell!” It was not language he was permitted to use, but Aewyn said it, and stormed out of the doorway and out into the hall and across the grand stairway landing to reach Otter’s rooms, his guard trailing him.

Why? he intended to ask Otter, first off and without preamble. Whatever trouble Otter had gotten into, there had to be time for cooler tempers to prevail. His father had gotten the family temper from his father and his father from his grandfather, and Aewyn had his own. They could all shout and threaten, but a quiet few words with Otter first would settle his stomach.

Then they could both go and talk to his father, and his father would listen to him. He knew it.

But when he opened Otter’s door and walked in, he found the fire still burning, but no sign of Otter, not in any of the rooms, only a book on the floor and a piece of paper beside it.

He picked it up. He read it, and things came half-clear, at last. Lord Idrys. Master Crow, no less. That was not just a problem. It might be deadly.

“Where is he?” he demanded of his useless guards. For the first time he was frightened.

“We have no idea, Your Highness,” Selmyn said, and Aewyn brushed right past him and headed back the way he had come, and on to his father’s rooms.

More guardsmen, standing outside the doors, came to abrupt attention as he headed straight through their midst.

The last, seniormost, had the temerity to lower a hand, barring his progress.

“I’ll see my father!” Aewyn said. “I’ll see him now!”

His guards had overtaken him. His guards and his father’s cast combative looks at each other, and the seniormost signed for silence and slipped inside properly to inquire if the king could possibly be interrupted.

Aewyn shoved the door open and walked in without leave. The guard’s quick move saved the door from banging.

“Father?” he called out, and saw the far doors shut, those that barred off the royal apartments, which generally meant a conference in progress. He headed for them, jerked the first open, and found his father, indeed, in conference with the Lord Chamberlain, who had been leaning over a table full of charts.

“Aewyn?” his father asked, and rose to his feet—not startled, no. Upset.

Aewyn went at the matter in his father’s own way—head-on. “Where’s Otter?”

“In his rooms, one would have thought.”

Aewyn shook his head. “He’s not. He’s heard. I’ve heard. He got a message from his gran by way of the Lord Commander. And you had already arranged the Guard to go with him in the dead of night, without seeing me! Why did you not tell me, Father?”

His father turned to the Lord Chancellor.

“My lord king,” the Lord Chancellor said, excusing himself, and Aewyn clamped his lips together and said not a word until witnesses, even the guards, had passed outside the doors.

Alone, his father stared at him until it occurred to him that he would lose, in any test of wills. It was his part to bow his head, unclench his jaw, however difficult, and adopt a milder tone.

“Why was I not informed?” Aewyn asked again, trembling with outrage.

“Where is he?”

“Not in his rooms. The fire’s still burning, but he’s not there. Neither is Brother Fool.”

“He was to leave,” his father said, ignoring the epithet. “Tomorrow. I’ve told the stables to notify the Guard if your brother should try to leave. I was going to speak to him tonight. Or earlier, if he appeared. I was going to send him off with a proper escort, all the help he and his gran could want.” His father drew a deep breath and his brows knit. “There was a message.”

“I read it.”

“It was a lie,” his father said. “Or at least, it was intended to give him an excuse.”

“You did it!”

“I fear I did.”

“Then he’s taken off to help her, and it’s a lie?”

“He won’t have gotten a horse. Or passed the gates. The Guard will bring him back.”

“He’ll have walked out. He’ll have taken Paisi’s horse. He’s out there, in the snow.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because if he couldn’t get a horse at the stables, he knows where Paisi’s is, and he was going to ride him to the lodge.”

“What does the lodge have to do with this?”,

“We were going there, and he was going to ride Paisi’s horse, but I said you’d get him a better. But if he’s gone home, and not asked anyone, then he’s gone down and taken Paisi’s horse from the pasture.”

“Where will he have a saddle?”

“He couldn’t get one.”

“The boy can’t ride!”

“If he has to, he will,” Aewyn declared. He had not a doubt in the world. “He’d do it, for his gran. He loves her. And he’s not here! Father, how could you?”

His father sank into his chair. He looked tired and downhearted. “It wasn’t my best plan. Damn the luck, sit down. No, sit, I say! If you break into men’s councils, be ready to hear things that may displease you. There was no message. No real one, at least.”

“Then why is the Lord Commander—” he began to ask, but his father lifted a hand.

“Hush. Hush and listen. There is serious trouble. There is trouble in the Quinahine, beyond the matter of the spilled incense.”

“It was all cleaned up. And that wasn’t his fault!”

“It was not all cleaned up. Beyond it, I say. Marks remain, which some can see. I can’t. You can’t—I trust you can’t.”

“I don’t think so.”

“To your uncle’s eyes, and to your mother’s, and to Otter’s, I’m sure, the spot persists. It reappeared, on the new stone. And trouble is rising. Rumors. Accusations of sorcery that sit very ill. The Bryaltines are generally a peaceful sect, but the years since the war have brought a certain militancy to part of the sect, that which roots itself in Elwynor… in your mother’s kingdom. Hostilities breaking out between Bryalt and Quinalt in Guelessar is not a good thing for the treaty, for you, and most especially for your mother and your baby sister in any visit this spring. Do you understand me in this?”

“I understand about the Bryaltines. But that’s not Otter’s doing.”

“Most firmly it is not. But the manifestations are visible to your uncle— which, indeed, you are not to say, boy!”

“No, sir.” He was troubled. He knew his uncle was saintly and devout, and had a voice in the Quinaltine, and moved the priests when others couldn’t. He knew his mother saw things. “But what if there is a spot?”

“It’s not that. It’s an imperfection. A sign. There are haunts within the Quinaltine.”

“Haunts!”

“Something like. Or something worse. Our Otter is not welcome there, whether by the dead or the living, whether or not the scratches on the stones were helped along by mortal hands. There is something the matter, Efanor assures me. For his own safety, he should go away for a season—only for a season!—and then, then, I promise you, he will come back when things are quieter. We need not have the heir to Ylesuin involved in any whispers of impropriety, or, gods save us, blasphemy.”

“Blasphemy! He never—”

“Patience. Patience, I say, and we’ll have him back in the summer, or at latest, in the fall: it’s become imperative to have him back, not to have given in to this. He’ll come back a little wiser, better known to the people, to the priests, to the court. And ourselves a little wiser in the meanwhile. We’ll keep him out of the Quinaltine then. And things will have settled. They do, with time. Be patient.”

“I can be patient! It’s all very well for me to be patient! But he’s out in the snow! He’s had dreams about his gran, terrible dreams!”

“More than the one?”

“More than the one. And he’s been terribly scared for her.”

“Damnation.”

“So send someone to bring him back! To tell him it was all a lie!”

“He’s on his way. He should go.”

“Papa!”

“But I’d not have him riding away with no saddle, taking that damned message for the truth, either. I am entirely at fault here. If he’s afoot, we shall find him. And I count on you,” his father said, lifting a finger, “to remain here, dutifully, attending Festival as you should, being a very model of good behavior. I’ll ride after him myself, beg his pardon, and ask him to come back to us this summer, when you may go to the lodge, hunt, do what you like. May I count on you?”

He had never heard of his father apologizing. Ever. For the king to ride off and miss the last ceremonies of Festival was no small thing. He nodded solemnly. “Yes. Yes, Papa.” He hadn’t used that word in the last year. But this was his papa talking, now, the man who had used to carry him on his back. It was his papa, not the king, who was going after Otter, and who stood the best chance of finding him. “Tell him… tell him I’ll see him this summer, and I’d have done something to stop him if I’d known.”

“I’m sure you would have,” his father said, and stood up and hugged him, and rang for the Guard. “Get my cloak, get my horse, get an escort. Now!”

“My lord king,” the answer was, and things happened quickly from that point.

Aewyn could only trudge back to his room, his troubled guard shadowing him. He wanted to turn and shout at them unreasonably to go away and do something useful, but they had to be there. He was the heir, and the Prince’s Guard always had to be there, for the rest of his life, no matter what he wanted.

v

STABLEBOYS SCURRIED, THE STABLEMASTER PROTESTED HE HAD AUTHORIZED no use of a horse, and sent some feckless boy to take inventory, great loving gods! inventory in the tack room, as if that mended matters, or as if he had time to hear it. But a halter was missing from the stall nearest, and no one could find it.

“Mind your doors, man, mind your gates and fences, now that the horse and the boy are missing!” Cefwyn seized Anfar’s reins from the trembling stableboy and hauled himself into the saddle. He had not waited to arm. He had no helm, no lance, only a mail shirt his bodyguard had brought with them and which he had donned, waiting for his horse and his guards’ horses to be saddled.

“My lord king,” the stablemaster called up to ask, “shall I send to His Grace?”

“Do that,” he said shortly. His brother needed to know: he was in charge in his absence. He had already ordered a message to Idrys, to get out on the search, too, and have the escort that should have taken the boy on to Henas’amef find other horses and get onto his track, too: he had just taken the horses, for his own personal guard.

With that, he turned Anfar’s head and rode out into the snowy courtyard, and on toward the gates, his bodyguard scrambling to keep up with him.

It was Marhanen temper that blazed past the gate-guards and damned them for lazy dogs; it was a more patient frame of mind that rode through the feckless traffic of his city streets, taking a reasonable pace on snow-packed cobbles and in among ordinary walkers.

But he had words for the keepers of the southern gate.

“Did you note a boy go through, probably in a hooded cloak? A boy afoot?”

The confusion that greeted that question, the guilty hesitation in the men, informed him that they had not, and dared neither lie nor tell the whole of the truth. They had likely, at the moment the boy had passed the gates, been doing exactly what he had found them doing: warming themselves in the guardhouse and having jam on toast.

“There will be one man on watch outside hereafter, no matter the weather: one man at least will be out in the elements, come flood, come ice, come all the heavens falling, day or night, to the end of time, and I want a list of those that come and go, for all time to come, at this and every gate, damn you!”

He was ultimately the gate-guards’ master, no less than his brother the duke of Guelessar, and if he had berated the stablemaster for his easy ways, twice caught, now he berated himself for slack, peacetime policy with the city gates here and elsewhere about the realm—it was peace: it had been peace for a decade and more: people had gotten fat and easy. And the burden his order for name-taking imposed on honest citizens might not be temperate or even wise, now that the gate was open and the horse and the boy were gone, but he had the most unwelcome feeling that the easy times were in jeopardy. He would leave it to Efanor to make sense of it, once the guards had remembered their jobs were not sinecures, even in peacetime. Efanor, once shown an error, mended it.

Efanor had attended the boy in sanctuary, and discovered his distress, and tried to protect him, when the king, under public witness, could not touch his own son. Who must have been terrified beyond anything he showed.

Would he had taken a different course. Would he had never agreed to leave the boy believing that damned message for any length of time, nothing so long as an hour, which he had hoped was only enough time to deceive Brother Trassin and see him out the door. All through the boy’s visit, he had left Otter to Aewyn, thinking the world at peace. He had feared too much attention from him might frighten the boy, or, at the other extreme, encourage too much presumption of favor.

Now he had fractured the peace, high and wide.

Now, please the gods he might find the boy still at the pasture, still trying to get up on that tall beast, but he doubted it. Otter was no great fighter, but he was agile, and clearly no moss grew on that lad once he had formed an intention to move.

He only hoped the horse might simply slip the boy softly into a snowbank and take off for his home fields. He hoped, in the whiteness ahead, to see a cloaked figure afoot and coming toward them, dashed in his hopes of escape or doggedly headed toward Amefel afoot.

But when he came to the byroad that led off to the Darkbrook pastures, tracks in the snow showed a boy going in and a horse coming out onto the main road.

No need to divert off the road to the pasture lane and back. The condition of the tracks showed a passage old enough, but not buried: they had to move. The horse in question had only a boy’s weight to carry, and the horse, a piebald gelding, an accidental breeding of one of his own mares, was nevertheless strong, fast, and surefooted on bad ground.

Did the boy have any food with him, for him or the horse? Had he taken more than a cloak for cover? The snow, whipped off the ground by the wind, made a disobliging veil across the road, blurring all distant sight, making too great a haste reckless indeed. He put Anfar to all the speed he dared, and his guard rattled around him.

But what had he asked himself before this, when luck had seemed to favor the boy and when he eluded searchers and found ordinarily competent men sheltered in the gatehouse, in an uncommonly strong spate of snow?

Simple bad luck?

He dared not assume it was.

They followed the track until it merged with that of local farm carts and foot traffic, and lost itself, near Pany Well. The sun sank, colored red, in the magic-ridden west.

“Your Majesty,” Paras said then, the captain of his bodyguard, riding close. “There’s no catching him. His horse has no weight to carry.”

He didn’t look at the man. Temper boiled just below the surface, the hateful Marhanen temper, which broke things and did wild things that only added fuel to anger.

He breathed once, twice, three times before he simply turned Anfar’s head toward Guelemara, and his guard swung in about him.

Well, he said to himself, staring straight between Anfar’s ears, no question where he’s gone, and if more than luck aims him, no question he’ll get there safely.

Follow him? Gossip enough attends him. Everything I do is marked and noticed, parsed and interpreted, and gossiped from here to Olmern.

And what can I do now? What’s fit to give a boy, to pay for the hellish ride he’ll have had?

Favor for the grandmother he loves? That she already has. That she would have, regardless.”

A message? More cold words on paper?

I’ll ride out myself before too many days, he thought, when this racket dies down. I owe the boy far more than any letter.

It was full dark when they met Idrys and his men coming toward them, on a road otherwise deserted, at the snow-choked bottom of a hill where their outward passage had already broken the drift.

Idrys, wrapped in a hooded cloak, saluted him, and asked no foolish questions. The boy was not with them. They were exhausted and out of sorts in their meeting.

“Two men will go on to Lord Crissand,” Cefwyn said, saying nothing about the message that had started this journey. “Send a man on. This message for Lord Crissand: treat my son as a guest in your province, treat his man as mine, treat his grandmother as a woman I favor. Protect them against hostile influences by any means necessary, and supply them with whatever comforts they may lack. And the messengers will visit my son’s house and say this: your father and brother send their love. You will visit us again come summer, when we hope for a quieter season. All the house regrets your leaving. Must I repeat it?”

The skills of a courier would have made it sure, word for word and with no variance, but, “Aye, my lord king,” Idrys’ lieutenant said, out of the dark. “I shall remember it.”

Idrys’ men did not promise what they could not perform, not twice. He nodded, stripped off his glove, and gave the man a lesser ring, the one he used for messages. Cold fingers transferred it: a warm bare hand closed solidly on it, across the moving gap between Anfar and the other horse.

“If you should overtake the boy on the road,” Cefwyn said, “do not attempt to bring him back against his will. Tell him his part of the message, escort him safely to his grandmother’s house, then deliver the message to Lord Crissand before you come back. Find out what the grandmother may need and personally see she has it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Two of the Dragon Guard rode off into the night. Cefwyn said not a word as Idrys and two others of his men turned about to ride with them. Silence persisted another few moments.

“A clever boy,” Idrys said.

“He is that,” Cefwyn muttered. “And your damned message went awry. It went greatly awry, Crow!”

“It went half an hour early. Trassin heard the gossip in the kitchen from a horse groom, and came upstairs to the Guard office, looking for the message, before it went the path we intended. He took it and flew right to the boy.”

“So were you at all tracking him?”

“Oh, tracking every step, and always a step behind. The brother brought this missive to the boy—and cometlike, blazed to the Quinaltine in great agitation. This indeed, we attended, attempting to get a man to report from inside the Quinaltine. The watcher upstairs had gone downstairs on his track; another was summoned to go back to the room and assure the boy’s safety. The boy had left. That man left to report to me. His Highness arrived and went to you.”

“Would you had let Trassin go and brought the boy to me. Damn it all. Damn my own complaisance. I may have an enemy in my own son.”

“You already have an enemy, my lord king. His mother continues alive, of all the Aswydds that were. And the boy evidently managed to leave the room in the scant few moments my men upstairs had followed Trassin downstairs. Downstairs, one of my men, realizing pursuit of the monk had drawn two men from upstairs and from the eastern door, and fearing that the monk might have done the boy violence, hurried upstairs—which left no one watching the lower hall. He found the room vacant and went to the west hall to inquire of the Prince’s Guard, who had not seen him at the Prince’s door or on the stairs. The Prince then heard the report—hence there, and to you, and meanwhile my men had gone down to report to me—while the boy was eluding our precautions at the stable and also at the gates, likely the Guelesfort’s western gate, a miraculous single step ahead of our inquiries all the way. We did not hear about the horse in pasture until one of my men consulted the stablemaster. But that was after you had left, my lord king.”

It was not in Master Crow to apologize. He came within a hair of it this time.

“It was not the advice I had, Crow. It was my taking it. I lied to my son. I never liked it. I should never have done it. And damn the man! What has he told the Holy Father, do you know?”

“That the boy attacked him.”

“Attacked him? Our Otter? Never!”

Idrys asked darkly, “Will you tolerate this teller of tales?”

“Nothing to provoke His Holiness, Crow. Leave him to Efanor. For now. This will be silenced. Or I shall take other measures.”

“My lord king.”

He knew Idrys; Idrys knew his ways. The arguments between them were old, the disagreements frequent, but they did not long revisit things done and beyond recall, like the untidy chance of a horse groom in the kitchen. Or the chance of a boy choosing exactly the right moment to duck down a stairway or out a door.

It was exactly the sort of luck that had attended them for days, was it not?

For a time after that exchange, the creak of saddle leather and slight jingle of armor was all the sound about them. There was nothing left to do, Cefwyn thought, but what Idrys’ very trustworthy men were now doing, going on to Amefel and being sure the horse did not throw the boy and leave him afoot. There was no hope left of his finding the boy tonight. Nor was there any hope of amends to the boy for the lie. There was only a long, cold ride home from here, and an explanation to his wife and to his son. Sometimes, trying to do justice, trying to balance one need against another, the king of Ylesuin missed the mark very badly. And this was beyond bad luck.

His hand, still bare, sought the inside of his shirt, where Tristen’s medallion lay, warm against his chest, hidden from all sight.

Keep him safe, he wished, like a prayer, but not to any god. I’ve tried so long to keep from doing wrong with the boy. I kept my distance this season to let the boys manage for themselves. I tried to bring him onto the rolls, into public view, where people could see he’s such a well-favored boy. I tried to do well for him. And now plainly I’ve not done the right thing. Nothing I’ve done in years has gone this badly amiss.

Keep him safe.

Keep all of us safe from whatever’s afoot in this business. Something surely is.

Sometimes, when he thought of Tristen, he felt a comforting warmth, a sense someone was listening.

Tonight the warmth failed and faded, and he put the glove on quickly, numb to the bone.