Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

M’lord, they called him, and respected him. That was a different thought, and relieved him of fear somewhat.

He decided to take it for granted, then, that he was set free as Cefwyn had said, and he did venture into the hall. Idrys was not there, to his relief, and he walked down the hall with two guards remaining behind at the room and two guards trailing him, guards who declared they were not to talk to him and who seemed also forbidden to walk beside him.

He wished that they could do both. There were questions he would have liked to ask them. But there was, his consolation, a great deal to see in all this great place.

He explored the polished upstairs hall, where echoes rang with every step. None of the servants returned his attempts to smile, but shied from him as the townsfolk had, and he supposed that they had had their orders, the same as the guards had, not to speak with him.

He went cautiously downstairs, and met the stares of finely dressed men and women who stood in groups, stared with cold eyes and spoke words guarded behind hands and turned shoulders. They seemed to measure him up and down and did not want him among them, that was clear.

He had as fine clothing as they, but no gold, no embroideries—he supposed that as they saw things what Cefwyn had given him was very plain. And perhaps they knew that he was from Ynefel, which no men but Emuin seemed to trust. The men when he did walk past them gave him only cold faces. But the women, some of them, looked over their shoulders at him, and one, with remarkable red hair, did smile.

He stared longer than he should have, perhaps, drawn by that one pleasantness and wishing to speak to her. But he remembered Cefwyn’s instruction, and the woman walked away with a swaying of remarkable bright skirts. Men that witnessed the exchange gave him very cold, very angry stares and made him certain that he should not have smiled back at her. There seemed to be a rule against looking at him. Perhaps Cefwyn had made it.

“Was I wrong, sirs?” he asked his guards. And they looked confused, and one said,

“Certainly not by us, m’lord.” At which the others laughed, but not in an unpleasant way. So he felt he had not done wrong, at least not so the guards could tell where the fault was, and he continued right in their eyes.

But he had, the moment he thought of it, broken Cefwyn’s commandment to him, just by speaking to them. And he heard Mauryl chiding him, saying, Can you not remember, boy?

He seemed to have learned very little, over so much time. Mauryl would still despair of him. Mauryl would still shake his head and say he was a fool, chasing after butterflies again, and forgetting to mind the many, many things he was supposed to remember.

But he did not retreat to his room. There were things still to see and things still to know. There could be no learning if he did not try new things, and there could be no safety, he thought, if Cefwyn did not will him to be safe: Cefwyn was clearly lord of all these people as Emuin was master, and if either of them said that he was free to walk where he would, then he went where he would, trying to ignore the angry looks that came his way.

He walked further, to a place in the downstairs hall where the marble pavings changed to worn flagstones. That dividing line in the plan of the building struck him like a Word: it felt that strange, that important to him. He stopped still, and looked about him across that Division at walls less ornate than the walls elsewhere. He expected doors where there were no doors, he expected a hall—and found one, but hung with Banners out of place there, and the stones were plastered over and painted. It was not right. The doorway was not Right.

There’s a magic to doors and windows, Mauryl had told him. Masons know such things. So do spirits.

“M’lord?” he heard his guards say, faint and far to his ears. He heard the clank of armed men walking. He saw Shadows there, and turned a frightened look to the men with him.

The hall changed. It was only the hall again.

“Are ye well, m’lord? Will ye walk back again? There’s no outlet by this way.”

There was not. Not now. The Place he knew had had a further door.

But the door let them only into what seemed a blind end, bannered and hung with weapons of every sort. He knew another Name, but clearly it was not the right Name, as Kathseide was not right, and men knew what he said, but named it differently, so they thought him a fool, too, and simple. That was what they called a man who lost himself in hallways and stumbled over sills that to his reckoning did not belong there.

He feared that flagstoned hall. He was glad to leave it. It felt wrong, in that doorway. It was fraught with the chance of Words, and he had had enough of Words for a few days: he truly hoped to settle the ones he had, and perhaps to find Owl, if Owl could find his window.

He did not know why the place down there had made him think of Owl. And then he knew: it had been like the loft. There had been a high, peaked end, and exposed rafters. Sunlight had streamed in where now there was stone. Birds had gone in and out that opening that did not exist, Hawks had lived there, and fed on pigeons and on mice, being birds fierce as Owl.

Those were the shadows he saw, the bating of wings, not the still, straight display of dusty banners. Owl might have come there. But Owl could not find an entry, no more than he had found a way to summon  Owl.

He thought the more time passed, the stranger and wilder Owl might grow, until Owl quite forgot him.

He wished he could ask his guards if they had seen a large lump anywhere about the eaves, a very unhappy lump, Owl would be.

But, no talking to them, Cefwyn had said. He had learned something.

The place where Owl might have been at home in the Kathseide was shut to him, with the coldness with which shoulders turned to Owl’s master.

Again ... no welcome. No hint of welcome, not for him, nor for Owl.

They would become lost from one another. The windows were too tight, except for here, and here it seemed things should be wood and very little stone, there should be an airy passage, and it should smell of straw. It frightened him. Words and Names had never betrayed him before. It made him doubt other things he thought were sure.

But there was, absent Emuin, no one he thought might advise him what he saw.

And Emuin did not come that day or the next, nor the next.

The size of the building was deceptive. It sprawled its wings and corridors in unexpected directions, and made courts and narrow shafts and mazes of halls in which it was easy, except for the presence of his guards, to become lost.

But six days was sufficient to wander every permitted hallway of it.

There was a tiny cramped library filled with parchments and codices, occupied by two old men who had no love for each other. There was, on a seventh day, when his guards became involved in a dice game in the hall below, a great room of sunny windows where brightly dressed ladies sewed and infants played, but he was not welcome there, and he distressed his guards, two of whom he did not see the next day; he counted it his fault and sent in writing to beg Cefwyn’s pardon, but Cefwyn sent back to him, also by written message, saying they were men, not children, and they knew their duty.

He took that for severest rebuke, and a sign that he was not himself a man, in Cefwyn’s opinion.

He had found the kitchen, a ready source of food at any hour, Cefwyn’s orders refusing him no luxury.

There were Barracks which he avoided, where the guards exchanged long and easy conversation with their fellows, but he could not speak, and he found it tedious and uncomfortable, and full of harsh and disquieting Words.

There was the Armory, which smelled and echoed of Weapons, and his guards said that was no place for him. But there was the Forge not so far from it, where the master Smith and his helpers worked metal glowing bright and almost transparent, making it grow and change, and where sparks flew like stars.

There were Stables, which excited his interest the moment he saw them, but soldiers barred him and his guards from that yard, saying they had had orders. So there were exceptions to Cefwyn’s grant of freedom, and one involved Weapons, which did not appeal, and the other involved Horses, which were a Word of Freedom itself, a Word of Hay, and Leather, and soft noses. They were a cascade of Words—Heavy Horse, and Light; Mare and Foal; Hoof and Hock and Pastern, and he could have stayed and watched for a long time and drunk in those Words, but the guards had their orders, and he had no more than a glimpse of creatures that set his heart to racing and his hands itching to touch and know.

There was a long wing of Warehouses dusty with grain, a place of pleasant smells and an occasional furtive rat; he liked to be there, and he had discovered it on the third day, but the records keepers of that place seemed likewise anxious to have him gone, and the guards were bored, so after the fifth day he came no more to the granaries.

In all his explorations, he found no loft, only upper floors, and they said there was nothing higher, no place better than his own windows from which he could see the other roofs and a narrow space of courtyard. His windows could not be opened, except the small square that could let a breeze in; he supposed that was for safety.

He did not like it that the windows had no inside shutters to latch, and reading by candlelight or lying abed in the dark, he cast looks askance at that glistening dark glass on nights when the wind blew and sighed about the eaves, but evidently the Zeide had less fear of Shadows, and no one but he seemed worried about the matter. He even opened the window one night and left a bit of sausage out on the ledge, closing the little window quickly. He hoped Owl would find it and he would know by its being gone in the morning that Owl had been there—but it was still there when the sun rose, and by the next afternoon it was gone, after the servants had been there tidying up, so he thought that they and nothing baneful had found it.

One sanctuary he discovered where he could walk and sit at will: the west garden—which he came upon quite by accident, and which he most loved of all the places he could go. It was like a small, safe woods grown within walls, the trees carefully trimmed, even the pond neatly bordered.

Birds from beyond the walls came and perched in the trees and hedges as he could not imagine they would do in the cobbled streets of the town down the hill. His pigeons came down, too, five at least that he recognized from his ledge on the other side of the building, and with the freedom of the garden and no opening pane to scare them, they began to take bread quite fearlessly from his hand.

But others disapproved the pigeon-feeding, and showed it by their looks. The lords and ladies of the Court resorted to the garden in the shady hours, jeweled and beautiful to see, at distance, in clothing with gilt threads that flashed and sparked in small patches of sun; but their stares at him were disdainful when he sat on the ground feeding the birds, which, when he thought about it, they, in their fine clothes, could never do.

The pigeons came to him now when he simply sat on the bench by the pond—there was a pair of titmice that grew more and more clever, and he fed them and fed the fish that lived there, while the lords and ladies (for those were the titles one did call them) along with earls and ealdormen and such, simply ignored his presence, and he theirs. He read his Book in the bright sunlight—or dutifully tried to read it—and on further days tempted the birds with grain that he asked the servants to bring him.

They were, he said to himself, mostly town birds, never so trusting as the birds of Ynefel, and would not bear a sudden movement, except the tits and the pigeons, who became entirely sure of him and very daring.

No one in all these days had broken Cefwyn’s rule and spoken to him.

He watched the lords and ladies in the assurance of safety here and studied their manners and their better graces such as he could puzzle them out, thinking that if he were more like them, he would become more acceptable in this place. Since in all these days, neither Cefwyn nor Emuin had troubled to call him, and the servants, the cooks, the archivists, and the granary keepers all dealt with him as quickly as possible and in silence, it did seem to him that it might please Cefwyn if he were more mannerly, and more like the people who lived here.

But he would not abandon the birds, who chattered to him, and buffeted his ears with their wings.

Came a day he sat, as often he would, by the pond, once he had exhausted the birds’ appetites; and he had two books to read—one being Mauryl’s, of course, which he would try every day until his eyes grew tired. But the other was a book he could truly read, and which spoke about Truth, and Happiness, and he daily lost himself in that, once the birds were well fed and the fish in the pond were sated. Each afternoon, now that his guards had found occupation to themselves in the old stone arch, a comfortable place where they sat and tossed knives idly at the dirt and talked freely to each other, he read, laboring over the Words that concerned the manners of men and of Philosophy and right and wrong, tangled reasonings, not all of which made sense to him. Words came but slowly out of that maze. But they seemed to be very important Words, and he chased them where he could.

He was thinking of Justice when a shadow across the page startled him, and made him look up in alarm.

He had not been listening for any approach. He looked around at brocade skirts and dainty slippers and up into a fair lady’s face that smiled on him, red lips and dark eyes, and masses of auburn hair. It was the lady who had smiled at him before.  “Good day,” she said.

He laid his book aside and quickly gathered himself up, having now to look down at her, for she was not so tall as he. She was beautiful, bright and dainty, with a light in her eyes that seemed mirth just about to break forth. He was entranced, delighted—and dismayed, because he very well remembered the condition of his freedom, and spread his hands in apology.

“I cannot,” he said.

“Cannot what, sir?”

“Talk with you. Cefwyn forbade it.”

“Did he, indeed?”

“Forgive me. Please go. My guards will be unhappy.”

Auburn lashes swept over dark eyes and lifted again, restoring an intimate moment. She smiled at him, such a smile as held friendship and mockery at once. “Your guards will be unhappy. —I am Often Aswydd.

And who are you, sir, that Prince Cefwyn keeps so isolate in my house?”

“Your house?” It upset all the order he had made of things; and his question immediately brought a frown from her.

“My house, indeed, sir, and what is your name?”

“Tristen,” he murmured, and m’lady was what he thought one called a lady, be she a thane’s lady or an earl’s, but he feared offending her, having made one mistake already.

“Tristen of Ynefel? Do I hear true? Mauryl’s—what? Apprentice?”

“Student, m’lady. I was his student.”

“And Prince Cefwyn keeps you prisoner here. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What, don’t know?” She laughed and lost the laughter in gazing past him, where someone had walked close.

His guards had moved, and one put an arm between, wishing him to turn away. He bowed slightly before doing so. He knew that he had lingered longer than he should.  “Lady Orien!”

Emuin. Tristen looked, dismayed as the old man came strolling down the path.

“Your Grace,” Emuin said, also with a nod, “good day to you.” And after a silence, and sternly, “Good clay, Lady Orien.”

Orien stared at Emuin with what seemed intense dislike, whisked her beautiful skirts aside and walked away with small precise steps down the gravel path. The sun on her auburn hair shone like a haze of fire.

Tristen stared after her, and Emuin set a heavy hand on his shoulder, demanding his full and sober attention. “What was said?” Emuin asked.

“I told her my name, sir. She asked why I was a prisoner. She said this is her house. I thought it was Prince Cefwyn’s.”

Emuin seemed slightly out of breath. Emuin drew him to a bench and sat down, drawing him to sit beside him. “Do you feel yourself a prisoner?”

“I promised Prince Cefwyn I would not leave, and I—”

“Do you wish to leave?”

“I know nowhere else, sir. But if I am not welcome here, I know how to go back to the Road—if you give me leave.”

Emuin studied the gravel at their feet. “Do not,” he said at last, “trust that lady. She is one of the chiefest Prince Cefwyn meant when he warned you not to speak to strangers.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. He must say. Emuin commanded Orien, and Cefwyn perhaps commanded Emuin; he had tried in all he heard to make sense of it. Emuin was still out of breath, and he suspected that his guards, less attentive to their talk than he had thought, might have called Emuin, or Emuin might have seen what was going on from the windows above. He had never seen master Emuin in the garden before.

“As for going back to the Road,” Emuin said, “believe me that you are ill-prepared to wander it, young sir. There are very many dangerous people to account of.”

“Like Lady Orien?” He truly wanted an answer to his question. But surely Emuin remembered what he had asked, and chose not to answer.

“Lady Orien,” Emuin said, “and her sister, are Amefin, and this is, in good truth, their brother’s house. Heryn Aswydd is Duke of Amefel, and lords of Amefel did formerly style themselves kings—petty ones, but kings. Now they style themselves aethelings, which is the same thing, but they do so quietly. Prince Cefwyn is Lord Heryn’s guest, by the will of the King in Guelemara, who is not a petty king: Inéreddrin is King of Ylesuin, which is eighteen provinces, most of them far greater than rustic Amefel, which he also rules, above any duke. Prince Cefwyn is King Inéreddrin’s heir, and he does the King’s will here in Amefel as the King’s viceroy, which means the Duke of Amefel is obliged, being a loyal subject, to quarter the prince and his court, and his Guelen guard, both the Prince’s Guard, and the regulars. It also means the west wing of the Zeide is Prince Cefwyn’s so long as Prince Cefwyn pleases to remain in Amefel, which he will please to do so long as the King wills it. So you are the prince’s guest and ward, by right of Mauryl’s title in Ynefel, which His Highness chooses to honor at least by courtesy. So you are not answerable to Lady Orien except through him.”

There were a confusing number of Words in what master Emuin said.

But it meant Prince Cefwyn had taken care and charge of him. That was comforting to know. And he supposed that if he had to choose who was telling him things most true, it would most likely be master Emuin.  “I am glad to know that, sir,” he said.

“What are you reading? Is that Mauryl’s Book?”

“Yes, sir. But I still make no sense of it. The other the archivist lent me.”

Emuin picked the other book up from beside him and looked at it.

“Philosophy. Hardly a novice’s book. And you read this one, do you, with no difficulty with the words?”

“It seems a great deal of argument.”

“Argument, indeed.” Emuin seemed both thoughtful and amused.

“Do you like the scholar’s argument?”

“It seems to me, sir, the book is about Words, and I learn them.”

“And how else do you fill your hours?”

“l feed the birds. I walk.”

“You must be lonely.”

“I wish Mauryl were here. Or I were with Mauryl.”

“You Miss him.”

His throat went tight. “That is the Word, yes, master Emuin.” It was difficult to speak more than that. He looked away, wishing to speak, now that he had someone, if only for a moment, to speak to. But the words stuck fast. He thought Emuin would leave him in disinterest.

But Emuin set his hand on his shoulder, and left it there while he struggled to clear the lump in his throat, a strangely difficult matter now that there was someone beside him to notice.

“This morning,” Tristen began, as calmly as he could, “this morning I was thinking that, in Ynefel, I knew very little. I thought things changed a great deal. But now that I’ve been Outside, things inside the Zeide seem to change very little.”

“Very perceptive.” Emuin lowered his hand. “Things do change. But mostly common and noble folk alike live their lives inside safe walls, and never seek to go outside or travel as you’ve traveled ever in their lives.”

“Are most folk happy, sir? I see them laugh. But I can’t tell.”

“Nor can I,” Emuin said somberly. “Nor can I, Tristen.”

“Emuin, I’ve seen children.”

“Yes?”

“A man should have been a child. Ought he not? —And I never was.”

Emuin did not move, but stared at him with that troubled look any appearance of which he had learned to dread in people: it presaged fear.

But as if to deny it, Emuin smiled warmly and patted his knee. “If there is fault, be it that old reprobate Mauryl’s, never yours. Your consent was neither asked nor given. You exist. What you do now is in your power.

What Mauryl did regarding you—was not at all in your power.”

“Was I a child, Emuin? I don’t remember. Mauryl called me boy. But I think I never was.”

“Think of now, young sir. Now is yours. The future is yours.”

“But I was not a child, master Emuin. —What am 17” He began to shiver and Emuin’s hands seized hard on his arms. He wanted the old man to draw him into his arms as Mauryl had, to shelter him as Mauryl had, but there was, he believed now, no such shelter left in the world.

Held at arm’s length, he saw mirrored in Emuin’s eyes his own terror; he felt the grip that held his arms for comfort push him back more than draw him in—impossible either to escape or approach this man. Cefwyn had claimed him. Emuin had not.

“Ask no questions now,” Emuin said.

“You know, master Emuin. You could answer me. Could you not? All these people know. And they fear me.”

“Therein—” Emuin let go his arms and tapped him ungently on the chest. “There. Therein lies what you are, Tristen. Therein lies cause for them to fear you, or to adore you, or to trust your judgment as true-which is not the same thing, Tristen. And, believe me, you have more of choice in those matters than seems likely to you now.”

Tristen blinked; the pain in his chest unknotted at the old man’s rough touch and for a moment he breathed more easily. It was very much the sort of thing Mauryl would have said, and perhaps, though it lacked the tingle Mauryl’s cures had always set into him, there was a bit of healing about it.

“Important now that you stay here,” Emuin said, “mind what you’re told and stay safe while you learn.”

“You knew Mauryl. Did he speak to you about me? Did he warn you I was coming?”

“! last saw him years ago.”

“But you said that he taught you.”

“When I was as young as you seem now, he was my teacher. That was a long time ago.”

“And not after?”

“I couldn’t stay with him.” Emuin shook his head, and fingered that silver circle that he wore. “We differed. I walked the same sort of Road that you walked, my boy, the Road back into the world. Don’t be frightened here; this is a far less dangerous place than Ynefel.”  “I was never in danger there.”

“Truth, lad, you were in most dreadful danger. As was Mauryl. As events proved, I fear. Mauryl protected you. Mauryl saw to your escape.

Mauryl could do no more for you, and less for himself.”

Memory of that place was all he owned and Emuin’s words threatened to change it. “I was happy there. I want to be back there, master Emuin.”

“He was a demanding master, and he could be a terrible man. And well you should love him, if only that you never saw that other side of him. Patience never came easy for him.”  “He was good to me.”

“Tristen, you will hear hard things of him; they are many of them true.

He was feared; he was hated; and most of the ill that men say of him is true. But so, I very much believe, are all the things you remember. I tell you this because you will surely hear the ill that men do speak of him, and I would not have you confused by it. Hold to the truth you know of him; it is as true as any other truth, as whole as any truth men know, and I am vastly encouraged that you reflect a far gentler man than the master I knew.”

It was the same as when he had touched the hearthstones. The hand that had met the fire was never the same as it had gone in, having knowledge but never again the same joy of the light. That hand had been burned. The pain had entered his mind. And a little smooth scar remained of that moment, despite Mauryl’s comfort. In the same way he heard the truth about Mauryl, that Mauryl had existed before him, and outside him, and had had other students, who liked Mauryl less. He had no reason to think Emuin lied in his harsh judgment of Mauryl, who was his arbiter of all past right and wrong-as Emuin was his present master.

“Tristen,” Emuin said, “you say that you sat outside on the step the day Mauryl left you.”

“Yes, sir.” The sunlight turned colder. “I did.”

“What did you see there? What did you hear? What did you feel?”

“Dust. Wind. The wind took shape. It broke and became leaves. And the wind blew through the keep, and stones began to fall.”

“The wind took shape. What manner of shape?”

“It was a man.”

Emuin said nothing, then. Emuin’s face seemed more lined with age, more somber, more pale than he had been. He knew Emuin had not liked to hear what he had said. But it was the truth.

“It is too much to ask,” Emuin said, “that Mauryl in any sense prevailed; but he sheltered you, and I trust guided you to reach this shelter.

Do not think of going from this place. Whatever happens, do not you imagine going from here. I believe everything you say is the truth. I do not see falsehoods in you. Will you do as I say? Will you take my judgments in Mauryl’s place?”

“Yes, sir.” Tristen gazed at him, waiting for explanation, or instruction, and hardly felt the old man’s grip. The bearded face so like Mauryl’s swam in his eyes and confounded all memory. “Will you teach me as

Mauryl did?”

Emuin held his arms and drew him to his feet. “You and I should not stand in the same room. Not now.” With reluctance, the old man embraced him, then embraced him tightly. Tristen held to his frail body, not knowing why Emuin said what he said, but knowing Emuin’s embrace was unwilling until the very last, and knowing now that desertion was imminent.

Emuin set him back again, and for a moment there seemed both stern ness and anger in Emuin’s eyes. “Cefwyn will care for you.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. He could think of nothing worse than being abandoned to Cefwyn’s keeping, not even wandering in the woods. He looked down and Emuin shook at him gently, as Mauryl would.

“There is a good heart in Cefwyn, Tristen. He was my student, and I know his heart—which is a fair one, and a guarded one. Many people try to gain his favor, not always for good or wise intentions, so he makes the way to his favor full of twists and turns, but there is, once you have overcome all barriers, a good heart in him. He is also a prince of Ylesuin and his father’s right hand in this region, and you must respect him as a lord and prince, but mind, mind, too, —now that I think on it, —never take all that Cefwyn says for divine truth, either. He will be honest, as it seems to him at the moment, but his mind may change with better thought. Like you, he is young. Like you, he makes mistakes. And like you, he is in danger. Learn caution from him. Don’t learn his bad habits, mind! —but expect him to be fair. Even generous. As I cannot be to you.

As I dare not be.”

“Yes, sir.”

The place they stood grew brighter and brighter, until it was all white and gray, like pearl; and the light came out of Emuin, or was all through Emuin, and through him.

–You are indeed, Emuin said, seeming, finally well-pleased in him.

You are indeed his work, young Tristen. Hold my band. Keep bolding it.

Keep on.

He could scarcely get a breath, then, and was standing on the pondside beside the bench. But Emuin was far away from him, halfway to the door; and with his back to him, walking away down the flagstone path.

–There is no leaving, young sir. You cannot find Mauryl again. But you can find me, at your need. Do not come here oftener than you must.

I strictly forbid it. So can your Enemy reach this place. Do not bring him here. And do not linger in the light. At your urgent need only, Tristen. To do otherwise will put us both in danger.

It was like a brush of Emuin’s hand across his face. Like a kindly touch, as Mauryl had touched him. And a warning of an Enemy that frightened him with scarcely more than that fleeting Word. He knew that Emuin was going away, but not as Mauryl had gone—there was a Place that Emuin would go to, and it was measured across the land and down the Road, and was not here—but it was not death.

He knew that something had happened to Mauryl, and that there was a danger, and that it dwelled in the light as well as in Ynefel, rendering that gray space dangerous for him to linger in.

Emuin vanished within a distant doorway, rimmed with vines, a green arch above the path.

And a gust of wind skirled along the gravel, kicking up dust. There was a fluttering sound, as the wind went ruffling callously through the pages of his abandoned books.

He had been careless. He did not like such breezes. He went and gathered up Mauryl’s Book and the Philosophy both from the bench, closed and pressed the precious pages together, under the watch of his patient guards.

But he had nowhere he had to go, nothing now that he was bound to do but what Emuin had bidden him do. He sat on the stone bench and thought about that, watching the fish come and go under the reflections on the surface until the shadow from the wall made the water clear, and he knew his guards, who had no interest of their own in books or birds or fish, were restless, if only to walk somewhere else for the hour.

Chapter 11

He heard a clatter in the yard in the morning, and a great deal of it. It brought him from his bed and sent him to the door to ask the guards, who, in their way, knew most things that went on.