Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“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 missMaster 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. “ Thisis 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.