Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

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 foodis. 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 hisbanner, 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 hisword, no, I ain’t. I’m stayin’ what I was told to be, ’cause I ain’t facin’ himto 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.