Текст книги "Fortress of Dragons "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Cefwyn strode to the edge of the Quinaltine steps and set fists on hips. "You left our lands and our court at our express invitation," Cefwyn shouted down at him. "Now you presume to return without so much as asking our leave. Do you come to honor the new bride? If so, I find your timing damned ill considered, to her, to the noble houses here displayed, and to the Crown, sir!"

"Concern for the realm brought me, Your Majesty." Corswyndam swept a second bow. "And the honoring of my oath to Your Majesty, to uphold the king, the realm, and the Holy Quinalt! Things I've learned dictated I ride with scarcely a guard, in all haste, before intemperate influences might bring worse weather on the roads! And forgive my intrusion into this festive occasion, but I ask a hearing, Your Majesty, of utmost urgency. Your Majesty has been misled—"

" Wehave been misled?" It was clear, now, by the colors of Bryn, what Ryssand dared with this public show, and letting the famed Marhanen temper out, Cefwyn strode a step lower and pointed at Earl Cuthan of Bryn and at Lord Parsynan, faces he knew, one from his stay in Amefel and the other because he himself had appointed the scoundrel viceroy of Amefel on Ryssand's recommendation. "There's a pairing straight from hell! The man who would not be duke of Amefel, who betrayed his own people and contrived with traitors, and the scoundrel who slaughtered a nobleman's guard for his own damned petty spite! Are these blackguards under arrest? Is thatthe gift you bring me, two wretches fit for hanging? For that, I may be appeased!"

The two in question held back, and Parsynan retreated a step, looking starkly afraid. But no accusation scathed Corswyndam or brought a decent blush or a pallor to his face.

"The gift I bring Your Majesty is the truth, the much-abused truth, that—"

"Oh, come now, come, sir! Ryssanddefends the truth? If you think it resides in these two miscreants, you need to have a lad to guide your steps!"

"Your Majesty, I bring you peace! Peace with Elwynor!"

" Damnyou, I say! And damn these two traitors!"

But Ryssand had gotten his blade past Cefwyn's guard, and the poison had reached ready ears. Prichwarrin Lord Murandys, at Cefwyn's elbow, rushed to plead, loudly, before all witnesses, noble and common: "I beg Your Majesty hear him."

"Indeed," said Lord Isin, from his other side. "Indeed, peacewith Elwynor, Your Majesty. Hear him."

"I know the source," Cefwyn began to say, but then Lord Murandys cast himself to his knee on the icy landing and seized Ninévrisë's hand.

"Intercede, Your Grace, for the saving of your subjects and the king's mercy."

Cefwyn was shocked to silence, but Ninévrisë backed a step and tried to rescue her hand, all but slipping on the ice. Isin besought Efanor's arm in similar plea, but Efanor's bodyguard interposed an armored side, diverting the old man in alarm. A man slipped, guards reached for weapons, and all manner of mischief might have broken out, except Idrys called out sharply, "Hold! All hold!" and set an armored presence beside the royal family, arraying the Dragon Guard and all their weapons at his command.

And still Prichwarrin Lord Murandys, father of the forgotten bride, remained on his knees, a public scandal, and Ninévrisë, recovered from her near fall, refusing to grant him grace.

"Get up," Cefwyn said harshly.

Prichwarrin rose stiffly and obediently to his feet, and Cefwyn turned a baleful stare down at the armed company.

Artisane was there, too, that cloaked woman on the piebald mare, riding sidesaddle in her many-petticoated skirts, and she was a presence as unwelcome in Ninévrisë's women's court as her father was in his own. Inside the Guelesfort, out of public view, he could order Ryssand's throat cut, if he wished the breach with the north irrevocable—and Prichwarrin at the head of his enemies.

But such was the tangle of relations between the Marhanen kings and this most powerful of the dukes of Ylesuin that he could not set ducal heads side by side on Guelemara's gate. He had not formally banished Lord Ryssand: he had sent him forth in private disgrace precisely because he could not afford a public breach; and he had then countenanced Ryssand's pursuit of an alliance with his house, namely Efanor, trying to patch up the northern region's relations with the Crown—because without the north there was damned little left of Ylesuin.

"Peace, of course, is what we all desire," Cefwyn said at last, "and you shall have your hearing—at myconvenience! Now clear the streets before these good people demand your arrest! You've disrupted the festivities."

"When shall I see Your Majesty?" Ryssand asked.

"Obey your king!" Idrys said. "Withdraw!"

"At Your Majesty's command," Ryssand said, with another deep bow and with a faint smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Shall I camp at the town gate in disgrace? Or shall I have my residence in the Guelesfort at my disposal?"

Camp at the gate, was on Cefwyn's tongue, and, Sweep the steps of them, close behind. But Ryssand was too canny a campaigner, and the presence of the crowd, the hired tongues that would surely wag the instant this confrontation ended and spread whatever rumors Ryssand ordered, all forced control over the Marhanen temper.

"Sleep in the stables, for all I care, but—" Now, he looked beyond, to his people, acknowledging their witness of this unseemly display. "—take heed of rumor, and mind the source! The words of those who have fallen from grace for murder and treason in their own province are not to be trusted in Guelemara! We will listen and we will hear, but we will not be swayed by the interests of murderers!"

He descended then two steps closer to Ryssand:

"You will have your audience," Cefwyn said in no good humor, and for immediate ears only. "And if these two you've brought affront me as they affronted the duke of Amefel, their heads will sit on spikes on the town gate! Let them look to their lives, I say! And I place their behavior at your account, Ryssand! Look to it, and let them not offend me as they offended Amefel!"

"Your Majesty." Ryssand bowed in the saddle, and bowed again, and a third time before he turned his horse about and rode at the head of his small column—the banners of Ryssand and Bryn happening in the process to seize the precedence over the Dragon Banner of the Marhanen.

For that reason and in full consciousness of appearances, Cefwyn did not descend the steps to tail onto the lord of Ryssand's procession to the Guelesfort. He stood fast on the steps, with Idrys beside him, with Ninévrisë, with Efanor, Lord Murandys and Lord Panys and Lord Isin, and the bride and groom.

"Damn him," Cefwyn said.

"This is my wedding!" Luriel cried, in tears. "This is my wedding, does anyone remember? This is my wedding!"

"Be still!" her uncle said sharply. It was a wedding already marginally scandalous, not alone since the Patriarch's murder at the last attempt; all the world knew the niece of Lord Murandys had been in the royal bed.

And now at the outburst from Murandys, the young groom, leaving his bride, went several steps aside to confer with his father, Lord Panys, leaving Luriel alone before the scandal-loving crowd at the foot of the steps.

Cefwyn cast a look at Efanor, the while, wondering how Efanor had taken what had just transpired, and whether the marriage proposal between Efanor and Artisane had assumed an extreme advantage at the moment or whether he should take the excuse of his offense against Ryssand to consider the marriage entirely out of the question. It had seemed advantageous from time to time, Efanor being in no wise gullible and having his own notions how to contain Ryssand's ambition; now, among a dozen times else, he doubted the wisdom of it and asked himself how he could have been so foolish.

Ninévrisë's hand sought his, and her fingers pressed on his as if she would drive her own good sense into his hot-tempered Marhanen head: nothing precipitate, nothing foolish, she silently counseled him. The baron foolish enough to challenge his grandfather to that degree would have gone to the block, so he said to himself, but those raw, rough times of beginning a kingdom were done: his own reign was a rule of reason—so he hoped. Yet he asked himself now how the populace saw him, whether he had won this encounter or whether Ryssand had.

But on the thought of his grandfather's methods he left Ninévrisë, took the bride's hand, and brusquely led her to the groom and seized his hand. He held up their joined hands then to the witness of all the crowd, many of whom had by now forgotten they had come to witness a wedding.

That was what they had come to see. Had they forgotten it?

"A king's penny apiece!" he shouted. It was the third penny the Wedding had cost the treasury, but it was a grand gesture, it distracted the crowd into wild cheering, and he left it to Idrys and his capable staff to marshal the crowd into order and to the treasury to nnd pennies enough.

It was cheaper than bloodshed and the entanglements of a ducal execution.

Kiss the bride," he ordered young Rusyn, the groom, and as

Rusyn obliged, there rose cheers and laughter from the crowd. The union of two young nobles was far more understandable to the people, far closer to their hearts than the constant feuds close to the throne. "Give us a diversion," he added, for the young man's ears alone, and Rusyn, nothing loath, gave him that and more, leaving his new bride breathless, to the utter and noisy delight of the crowd. The traditional cheers went up, and when Cefwyn left the bride and groom to their moment of public display, and reached his intimates and his wife, he passed only a glance to Idrys, who understood every order implicit in that moment's stare and went to be sure all the necessary things happened.

The duke of Ryssand's little entourage had meanwhile had time to clear the square by now, the crowd had been entertained, and now the bridal procession could get under way without looking like the tail of Ryssand's.

"Ring the bells!" he said, realizing that the bells were the source of the silence, and a lay brother ran to relay that order.

"Trumpeters!" the Guard sergeant shouted. "Way for His Majesty an' Her Grace!"

They descended the icy steps without mishap, save one of the lay brothers went sliding in unseemly fashion, to the rough laughter of a now good-humored crowd.

For those who gathered omens from ceremonies, however, this one had not had the best beginning. Everything about the marriage of Luriel and Rusyn was second-best, from the choice of mates to the once-worn wedding finery, which had had to be recovered from soot and, one suspected, even traces of blood the common folk now called sacred.

Not the best-omened wedding, but gods, it was a relief all the same to have the matter done with. Panys was assured of a foothold in Murandys, where the Crown needed a loyal man. Ryssand had timed his arrival for after the ceremony, thank the gods, not to have disrupted the wedding altogether, and Lord Murandys was likely of mixed feelings about the choice of Luriel's wedding for Ryssand's return—Ryssand correctly predicting there would be no bloody confrontation and no arrest to mar a wedding.

But since Murandys had made the alliance with Panys as the way out of royal displeasure, during Ryssand's forced retreat from the court… Murandys might be asking himself now whether Ryssand's choice of moments might be a veiled threat against him. It might have been premature, Murandys might now think, to have made an alliance with a friend of the monarch: Ryssand must have some secret behind this move.

So Cefwyn thought, too; and that was the otherreason not to order Ryssand's arrest. There was more to it than appeared, and its name was very likely Cuthan of Bryn, and Tristen, gods save them all.

And peace with Tasmôrden? He began to guess the sum of matters, and said not a word to Ninévrisë on the matter of this peaceRyssand spoke of. She had heard as well as he, and knew no more than he, but neither of them could like the source of it: there was no agreement possible with Tasmôrden in Elwynor that did not preclude Ninévrisë's return as lady Regent—and that condition was entirely unacceptable.

Beyond unacceptable—it was foolish even to contemplate it. Tasmôrden was forsworn, a rebel against Ninévrisë's father. What faith could they put in another oath?

Not mentioning the faith in Ryssand.

So they walked over the now well-trampled snow, with evidence of horses roused out from a well-fed evening before: they walked, a royal procession, a wedding, over snow no longer clean, thanks to Ryssand—but becoming so, in the steady fall of white.

Snow veiled the Guelesfort gates into an illusion of distance and mystery.

Snow lay on the ironwork, a magical outlining of the dragons that were the center of the work, on the gates that lay before the second, oaken set of gates.

"He has something," Ninévrisë said in a hushed voice, as they passed outside the hearing of the crowd. "And it's not good."

"I know damned well he has," Cefwyn answered her. "And I know it's not good."

CHAPTER 7

There was no haste to deal with Ryssand… no chance, however, to exchange the royal finery for plainer garb, or to bathe away the incense that clung to the Quinaltine and everyone that had been within its walls.

Efanor came on the unspoken understanding that they had matters to discuss—urgent matters.

"Had you foreknowledge of this?" Cefwyn asked, drawing him into the privacy of the Blue Hall, where Ninévrisë waited, and added as he shut the door: "Superfluous to ask, but had you the least hint of this move?"

"None," Efanor said, and Ninévrisë sank down at the small round table where they often sat in their deliberations. "There was in fact every indication he would remain in his province at least until matters were settled between us. And yet he's brought the lady Artisane, when he certainly knows she's not welcome with Her Grace."

"Unwelcome," Ninévrisë said, "indeed, and so she is. But that's not saying I hold that sentiment to the last. If needs be, needs must. If Ryssand regrets the offer he made in favor of this peacehe talks about—perhaps that alliance with Artisane is that much more important."

"My very wise lady," Cefwyn said, touching her fingers. "I've no doubt. None of you, either, brother." He withdrew his hand from Ninévrisë"'s and found that hand wished very much to become a fist, which movement he resisted, as he resisted the absolute order he could give at any moment, any hour, on any given day, to arrest the man. Second thoughts were always possible. As the people's blood cooled, they were less and less wise. "Damn him! the effrontery of the man!"

But common sense, which even a monarch possessed, insisted that this man, this extravagantly provocative man, had come with somethingbeyond the ordinary, something so strong Ryssand was willing to cast his life and the survival of his house on its validity… and Cefwyn was relatively sure of the nature of it.

It was no surprise, the news that Lord Cuthan had come to Ryssand's lands: he had known that already; he had known Parsynan was there, too, both supping at Ryssand's table, Parsynan nightly regaling the man with Tristen's affronts to Quinalt decency, Cuthan complaining of high-handed abuse of power.

Conservative, noble-born Quinaltine in Parsynan's case, and—at most charitable guess in Cuthan's case—liberal Bryaltine, if Cuthan's private beliefs were even that close to the Quinalt. They were an unusual pair of advisors for any northern baron, to say the very least. Cefwyn wondered, did those watching that pair on horseback consider that curiosity? Did the commons have any least idea they were in the presence of an Aswydd, however remote in blood—advising orthodox Lord Ryssand?

Tristen had sent Cuthan to exile in Elwynor, in effect, into Tas-morden's hands. Damn Cuthan for a traitor—and depend on Tristen to grant him that retreat. It had given him a hellish problem.

"So Ryssand says he brings peace, and has a man lately in Ta-môden's keeping," he said, out of that thought. "An offer from Tasmôrden, that's the news, no great wit required for us to guess that much. It wants only the details."

"An offer from Tasmôrden," Efanor repeated. "An offer acceptable to the Quinalt zealots. One can only imagine those details."

"None of them acceptable to Elwynor," Ninévrisë said.

"Which goes without saying," Cefwyn replied. "Still, it would help to know the exact nature of the proposal before he brings it within hearing of the court—or has his agents gossip it about. We took damage enough in our encounter on the steps of the Quinaltine this morning—he uttered the word: peace. Peace, in any form that doesn't involve troops, would come welcome to all the barons. The seed's there. We can't unsay it."

"He was too polite," Efanor said slowly.

"Polite?" Cefwyn exclaimed, for politeness had been nowhere in his sight.

"To Her Grace," Efanor said, "he was polite. Everything he's done, every move his zealot followers have made, has been with the intention of lessening her position, and to chastise youfor having the effrontery first to choose a Bryaltine wife instead of Luriel and then to support Her Grace's claims to lands the barons—particularly those near the river Lenúalim—would have for their own, if you were our grandfather. Now, and for no reason, he acknowledges Her Grace publicly, and Murandys openly courts her favor. I ask why."

Any question of Ryssand, the Quinalt, and Ninévrisë struck so deeply to the heart of his fears he lost all sense of moderation. Most of the Quinalt zealotry which had caused such trouble in Guelessar had its doctrinal origins in the northlands, in Ryssandish territory, where the Quinaltine faith found its most absolute and rigid interpretation. They had seen that small leaven in the loaf rise up to bloody riot involving half the town of Guelemara not a fortnight ago, at Luriel's first wedding. Priests liberally supported by Ryssand's donations preached their conservative doctrine, and disaffected guardsmen Tristen had let go had spun tales of magic and sorcery in Amefel… the part about magic at least was true: sorcery Cefwyn did not believe. They had killed Father Benwyn, clandestinely murdered the Patriarch as too moderate, too accommodating to the Crown—he was sure that the Patriarch's accommodation of the royal marriage had cost him his life.

And most of all Ryssand's darts and the zealots' sermons had flown at Ninévrisë… Artisane's empty accusations, Ryssand's attempts to rouse the Holy Father to forbid it, even the appearance of a Sihhë coin in the offering box, sending Tristen into exile. All these schemes had aimed at foreign influences in the land, and he could not forget now that the Aswydds' place of exile at Anwyfar was burned to the foundations: even the moderate Teranthines come under attack. The Teranthines were no longer safe. The Bryaltines certainly would not be.

And Efanor was right: Ryssand had not taken the chance to slight Ninévrisë, on the very steps of the Quinaltine, when protocols might have covered that small spite, when in fact Ryssand's zealot priests would have taken amiss his acknowledgment of her—would have disapproved it heartily if they were there to hear, as they might have been.

What manner of game hadRyssand set in motion? And what did he intend?

Order something too extreme, and Ryssand might prove to have another, fatal dart in his quiver… something that might unsettle the populace, snow or no snow, into another convulsion of religious outrage.

But what was this courtesy toward Ninévrisë?

"He has something," Cefwyn found himself saying, unable to look his brother in the eye. "He has something that makes him confident enough to return in spite of me, something beyond an offer from Tasmôrden, which needs must include peaceful dealings between Quinaltine and Bryaltine."

"He has some accusations against Tristen almost certainly," Efanor said, "considering the company he brought with him. And I'm sure Tristen will have done something worth our apprehensions in any given fortnight."

"Almost certainly he has." About Tristen he had no illusions, nor fear of him, either. Gods, how he missed him—missed the innocent indirection that could lead a man to question his most dearly held assumptions. Truthwent where Tristen went, and his court, it seemed, could not withstand that habit of his. "Amefel can break out in plagues and frogs, and I'll still trust him. But you have the right of it. I fear he's not been discreet, not when he banished the earl of Bryn, not when he sent Parsynan out in disgrace."

"What dared we hope?" Efanor asked. "Discretion hasn't yet dawned on him."

"But, damn them, he's an assurance for our safety, if they understand him well enough, where he is. Maurylheld the old tower with never a bleat from Ryssand. What's changed?"

"Ryssand's ambition," Efanor said.

"Perhaps Tristen is the reason we hear from Tasmôrden now," Ninévrisë said softly. "Fear of what rises in Amefel. Perhaps Tasmôrden understands the new lord in Amefel very well indeed."

"So would Ryssand fear the new lord in Amefel, though for different reasons. Heurged me appoint Parsynan to the post, and I never asked. I never had the full accounting of the archive in Henas-'amef; I never had the full account of Heryn Aswydd's dealings, or where the gold flowed, and in Ryssand's uncommonattachment to Amefel, Ryssand's uncommonfear for Parsynan's safety. Gods know whether we'll ever get it out of the records, not since Ryssand's man went through them. But Ryssand can't touch Tristen—even without this army of alliance he's building—and gods help Ryssand if Ryssand ever struck at me: I don't know if I could restrain Tristen. Surely Ryssand knows that."

"But is it to the good of Ylesuin," Efanor persisted, "if we let the old power wake. Yes, Mauryl was in his tower, but he was quiet in his tower. Is it the gods' will… or is it some other will that guides this? I confess to you, brother,—I am not wholly at peace with this. I trustthe lord of Amefel, I trust him for his honor and for his goodwill—but he is—"

Efanor broke off, and left it unsaid, what Tristen was, or might be.

Sihhë?

The High King of the Elwynim?

"He is," Cefwyn said with a sigh, "Tristen. That says all. It says all he knows, more to the point."

"Are we sure?" Efanor asked. "Is it the man we know, who drove Parsynan from the town?"

"Oh, yes," Cefwyn said on a long breath. "Beyond any doubt. No temporizing, no debate. It was his best decision. Gods give us all the courage."

"Gods grant us the wisdom," Efanor said pointedly, "to apply it in due season. And thank the gods there's only one Tristen. Two would be—excessive."

"There were five, once," Ninévrisë said in the ensuing silence, "Five, if he is what most think."

"Gods save us from such days," Efanor said. "And I ask, in all, honesty, in all regard for one who's served you very well… is it; wise to lean for safety on this friend of ours, even willing the best; for us, as perhaps he does? He isMauryl's, if he is anyone's. And' Mauryl, whatever else, was not necessarily a friend of our house."

"An ally of necessity," Cefwyn said. He had not approached Efanor with his own fears in that regard, and perhaps that was a mistake on his part. Efanor was devout; but indeed, Efanor was emerging from a young man's religious innocence to a sober awareness of the power inside the Quinaltine, and its warfare with the Crown. He had seen firsthand the consequences of Lewenbrook, when an army came back after an encounter with sorcery. Efanor understood that sort of warfare, and when they came to a question of Tristen's involvement—the question was there, and it hung silent in the air a moment.

"I trust him," Ninévrisë said. " Ibelieve in him."

"So do we all. So do we all," Cefwyn said, and wished to say it, with all his heart. "He won't betray us. We'll have our army yet, damn Ryssand's conniving heart. He's failed in slandering you. Now he'll raise complaints about Tristen. That's exactly where this is; going. I can see it, right under the surface. Tristen's in the wrong and these saintly men he brings to argue how they were wronged—"

"Don't set your mind too early," Ninévrisë cautioned. "This peace—"

"This peacehe claims to bring," Cefwyn began, but a page hovered in the doorway. "Well? Well?"

The boy tried to say a word, but Idrys appeared behind him and simply moved the boy aside. "My lord king," Idrys said, and drew in a man in the habit of the Quinalt, a lay brother, a fearful and woebegone young man.

"That's very well, Deisin," Cefwyn said to the page. It was the presence of the priest that the young man very wisely doubted as legitimate or wanted, but the page drew back and Idrys escorted the priest in.

"It's good you came," Cefwyn said peevishly. The lack of warning about Ryssand was not Idrys' best work, by far, but Cefwyn bit back any harsher word.

"My lord king, this is Brother Meigyn. He asks Your Majesty's protection and a recommendation to the Quinaltine, for his service to Your Majesty."

"And that service?"

"Brother Meigyn has been a clerk of the Quinalt in Ryssand. His position there has become difficult, because of the service he's about to render. If he goes back to Ryssand's court, he's a dead man."

"Give him to Annas. Recommend him to Jormys. What's the tale?"

"Let me dispose of the good brother," Idrys said, and escorted the frightened man to the door, where he gave orders to the page waiting outside. "His Majesty's instruction," Idrys said. "A hot meal, a warm place to sit. Wait for me. I may have more questions."

Then Idrys was back, a black, foreboding presence: master crow with news that did not bode well.

"From Lord Ryssand's court?" Ninévrisë prompted him in a faint voice.

"Just so, my lady. Unhappily, this was my last man in Ryssand's court. Two others had to flee, not without delivering useful information. Another died a suicide, or so the official explanation ran. Meigyn remained to the last. He's given to venial sins, a love of ale and women, far better a Teranthine than a Quinalt avocation, but that's his misfortune. Being my last and best source, he had the good sense to come only when there was something worth his life… and considerable reward."

"He accompanied Corswyndam here?" Cefwyn asked, wondering how close the clerk might have sat to the duke of Ryssand, and whether there would be a storm over this desertion.

"Fled, rather, on foot, when he knew Corswyndam was coming here and with what news. He's an unobtrusive man—stole a mule at Evas-on-Reyn, and managed to get here two hours behind. What he does say seems well worth his risk, my lord king. It's the essence of what Ryssand will say tonight."

The details. The chance to set their course before the battle. Cef -wyn exchanged a look with his brother and his wife.

"Say on, master crow." Cefwyn drew a deep breath and leaned an arm across the back of his chair, waiting. "What does Ryssand think to win?"

CHAPTER 8

The evening was for a state celebration: Luriel's wedding night and all the grand commotion of a noble union, the bride and groom feted in hall, with course after course of food.

It should have been an unbridled festivity, but the undercurrent of matters in the court had Ryssand and Murandys, those traditional allies, doing a dance around each other more delicate than any pa-selle on the floor… the uncle of the bride tending not, as was traditional, to the side of the groom's family, the lord and lady of Panys, but to his old fellow in misdeed, Lord Ryssand.

Consequently the eyes of every experienced courtier in hall were less for Luriel than for Ryssand's daughter Artisane, emerging tonight as a whispered candidate to marry into the royal house. Efanor had loosed that rumor deliberately: far better to be the source than the subject of speculation.

And perhaps Artisane had also let word slip out. Certainly Ryssand had done nothing to restrain her. Her gown outshone the bride's; it all but outglittered the royal regalia, for that matter.

And clearly Luriel did not like the competition on her evening: her stark-set, basilisk stare settled on Artisane at every moment they crossed one another's line of sight.

A wild bedding tonight, Cefwyn said to himself. Luriel's temper was oil on tinder, in that realm… he could say so, who had Proposed to marry the lady himself. Now he asked himself how he could ever have fallen into Luriel's web of angers and passions, piques and rages and most of all how he could ever have thought her continual upheaval the ordinary way of women. Thatwas a basilisk indeed, tonight, stalking the cockatrice.

The lady beside him, in the simple circlet crown of Elwynor, in fine embroidery and a comparative lack of ornament otherwise… this was a woman, and she far outshone the pair of combatants on the floor. So Cefwyn leaned across the difference in their seats– Ryssand's damned stone—to whisper to his consort.

"You're the sun and the moon. They're summer lightning, and a dry night at that."

"And what will you be?" Ninévrisë asked with that wry response he so loved. "Ah! The stormy north wind."

"When Ryssand presents us his little play tonight, by the gods, he'll think so. And they could pile the wealth of the southern kingdoms on that minx and not improve her disposition."

"Which?" Ninévrisë asked, dagger-sharp.

"What, no love for Luriel either?"

"I welcomeArtisane. The two of them will not make common cause, not till pigs make poetry. It should keep the two of them busy and provide entertainment for the rest of us."

They never had loved one another, Artisane and Luriel, contrary to the politics of their houses. Luriel's detestations were legion, her uncle among them, and while the ladies warred with glances across the hall, the uncle and father made solemn converse behind a thick column, and tried to pretend no one saw them.

At a reasonable hour in the wedding-night celebration it was the custom for bride and groom to retire with the maids and ladies and young men trooping after them, bearing lit candles and fistfuls of acorns… the latter of which posed great annoyance to the marriage bed, when they cast them in. He and Ninévrisë had found the last wandering nuisance in the small hours of their wedding night, and flung it ceremoniously in the fire.