Текст книги "Fortress of Owls"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“I love you,” she said. “I’ll love you, forever and always. That says all.”

“It will always say all. And they won’t win, Nevris. They won’t win.”

“But oh, my friends, all my friends… my family… my home and my people…”

“I know.” He set his arms about her, let her rest her head against his shoulder, and she heaved a great, heartbroken sigh with a little shudder after. “Gods save them. We’ll go. We’ll take the town. We’ll have justice.”

If he had gone to Elwynor in pursuit of Tasmôrden at summer’s end, if he had not insisted on dealing with his own court, his father’s court, and all the old men, believinghe would have loyalty from men who had hoped he would never be king.

Folly, he could say now: the might of Ylesuin had been readier then than it was now, if he had only taken the south on to a new phase of the war, and damned the opinions of the old men who supported the throne in the north. If even two or three of the midlands barons had come behind him and gathered themselves for war along with the southern lords, they might have crossed the river, carried through to the capital… he had had Tristenwith him, for the gods’ sakes.

But what had he done with Tristen’s help? Set it aside. Tried to silence him for fear of his setting northern noses out of joint. Kept him out of view instead of using his help. And not demanded Emuin come down out of his tower and forewarn him. He had delayed for deliberations with men he had thought reliable and necessary and respected their arguments and their long service to his father, telling himself that their opposition to him had ended when he took the crown. Well now he had the consequence of it.

Yet crossing the river thus and relying on Tristen’s help with Althalen’s black banners flying would have offended the north, scandalized the Quinalt, alienated the commons, and thatmight have led to disaster and weakened Ylesuin, on whose stability all hope of peace rested… there was that truth. There was that.

Yet what might he have made of Ylesuin if he had not stopped at Lewenbrook and not forbidden magic and never come home to Guelemara until he had come as High King and husband of Elwynor?

What might he and Ninévrisë have become with the strength he had had in his hands in those few days? Everything he had done, he had done to get a legal, sanctified, recognized wedding that would secure an unquestioned succession, sworn to by the Quinalt and legally incontestable.

And, doing that, he had given Ninévrisë no way to win him and his aid except to cross every hurdle he set her. What else was she to do, having no army, having nothing but a promised alliance with him on condition of their marriage?

He owed her better, he thought, holding her close and cherished within his arms. Damn Tasmôrden and damn Ryssand and his allies, and damn his own mistaken trust in his own barons, but he owed her far, far better than this.

Chapter 6

The baskets had disappeared from master Emuin’s stairs long since—Tassand’s managing—and Tristen left his guard below as he climbed up and up the spiral stairway on this day after his arrival home.

A door opened above before he could reach it, letting out not daylight this time, but warmth and candle glow, and a rapidly moving boy… who had not expected to see him there, face on a level with his feet. Paisi came to an abrupt halt and tried to make himself very small against the wall of the landing.

“M’lor’,” Paisi whispered, as Tristen climbed up to stand there, far taller than Paisi.

“Paisi,” Tristen said. “I trust master Emuin is in.”

“Oh, that ’e is, m’lor’, an’ ’is servant sent me after wood an’ salt, which I’m doin’, m’lor’, fast as I can.”

“Other servants from the yard will carry the wood up for you, understand. You have only to ask them. The salt you must manage. Cook’s staff will not come up these steps. They complain of ghosts.”

“Yes, m’lor’.” A deep, deep bow, and a wide-eyed, fearful stare. “Yes, m’lor’, an’ I will, m’lor’.”

“Emuin won’t harm you.”

Paisi seemed to have lost all powers of speech. He had only added a good coat to his ragged shirt and worn boots to his bare feet; but he had had a bath, despite his uncombed and undipped look.

“Didn’t I send you to the guard and to Tassand,” Tristen asked on that sharper look in the imperfect light, “and is this the dress they gave you?”

“I been i’ the market, m’lor’, an’ beggin’ Your Grace’s pardon, listenin’ as ye said, so I kep’ the clothes, as they’d point at me if I was in a fine new coat.”

There was a small disturbance of the gray space, a gifted boy trying to become invisible, as, in those clothes, he looked very much the boy he had always been… except a fine new coat.

“Go, do what he asks,” Tristen said, not willing to deny master Emuin’s instructions, whatever they might be, and not willing to plumb the convolutions of Paisi’s reasons this morning. He had far more serious matters to deal with.

Paisi ran past him, and Tristen stepped up into the doorway of a tower room in far better order than last he had seen it.

“Good morning,” Emuin said from the hearthside. Emuin sat on a low stool, stirring a pot and not looking at him, but the faint touch of wit was there, in the gray space, and it was the same as a glance. Tristen took it so.

“So Cevulirn is riding south,” Emuin said, “leaving his guard at the river, and you have made your agreements for Bryn, for the raising of a wall, and for the settling of a band of fugitives at the old ruins.”

“To Cefwyn’s good. Do you say otherwise?”

“Not I,” Emuin said. “No.”

It was always the same reply, whether a refusal or a denial of objection always unclear. Emuin never rose quite as far as agreeing with his choices, and this refusal to contradict him was as halfhearted.

“I have ordered the watch fires ready,” Tristen said, coming to stand over the old wizard. “Which is a great hardship on the men that keep them. Consequently I wish all bad weather north of the river. I could reach Cevulirn otherwise, but it seemed better to use the fires, and to extend them to the view of Lanfarnesse, Olmern, and Imor.”

Emuin nodded.

“Was that wrong?” Tristen asked. “ Isit wrong?”

Emuin gave a shrug and never abated his stirring. Whether it was a spell or breakfast was unclear by the pot’s sluggish white bubbling. It smelled like porridge.

“I’m sure I don’t weep for Tasmôrden’s discomfort,” Emuin said. “It’s no concern of mine, and none of my doing.”

He could lose his temper entirely at this resumed silence. Almost. But Mauryl had taught him patience above all things, and he gathered it up in both hands.

“Porridge?” he asked, a tactical change of subject.

“Barley soup.”

“How does the boy do?”

“He’s a scoundrel,” Emuin said, “but deft. He won’t steal from me. As for why you’ve come—you wished His Reverence in Guelessar, as I recall. So to Guelessar he’s gone.”

A shot from the flank. It was not entirely why he had come, but he knew he was in the wrong, and badly mistaken in the way he had dealt with the man. “Uwen couldn’t stop him.”

“Short of your man arresting him or sitting on him, I doubt Uwen could have done anything to prevent him. What a cleric will, that he will, and a duke’s authority through his man or otherwise can’t stop him… short of lopping his head, that is, and that creates such ill will among the clergy.”

“I’ve written to Cefwyn,” he said meekly.

“Good. You should.”

“And to Idrys, more plainly.”

“Regarding?”

“Ilefínian.”

“ That…”

“Ninévrisë’s people are dying, sir! Don’t you know that? That’swhy I came.”

Emuin looked at him from under his brows. “I say thatbecause it was foredoomed to happen.—So, perhaps, was your settlement at Althalen. Oh, yes… thatmatter, while we’re at it.”

“You might have advised me.”

“Advised you, advised you… were you ignorant what Althalen means, and what it signifies to have that site of all sites tenanted again?”

He drew a deep breath. No, he could not say he was ignorant of that.

“Were you unaware?”

“No, sir. But there was nowhere else I knew to put them. Herewasn’t safe.”

“In that, you may be right.”

“Am I wrong, sir?”

“Wrong? I think it must have been fated, from the hour Cefwyn, the silly lad, handed you itsbanner and hisfriendship. What more could he think?”

“Have I done wrong, sir? ⁿ

“I don’t think right and wrong figure here. If Althalen was foredoomed to fall and foredoomed to rise, damned little he or I could do about it.”

“And I, sir?”

“At least this manner of rebirth does no harm to him.”

From the edge of the water to very, very deep waters indeed, and shattering accusations.

“I amhis friend, sir!” Tristen dropped to a bench near the fire, rested his elbows on his knees, and met the old man face-to-face, seeking one level, honest look from him. “Look at me, master Emuin! Have I given anyone any reason to think otherwise? Have I ever given you or Cefwyn any reason to think otherwise of me?”

“This boy you found,” said Emuin, shifting the tide of question again onto a former shore, “this boy who’s provoked His Reverence to disastrous measures and brought us all manner of trouble also happens to inform me of various things. A wisewoman, one of the grandmothers, has mothered young Paisi since he was left as a babe at her door. I’m fairly sure there’s the old blood in him, which doubtless frightened his unfortunate mother into abandonment. That, or she had the Sight herself and saw him tangled with your fate.”

“I wasn’t here yet! Mauryl hadn’t Summoned me.”

“All the same.”

“ Why? Whyshould anyone fear me?”

“Why shouldanyone fear you? What do you think? And considering the small matter of His Reverence, tell me what you think he’s apt to do.”

“Spread trouble in Guelessar.”

“Is it absolution you want or a better answer?”

“What shall I do about it?”

“Why did you bring Paisi out of gaol? Why was it important to find him?”

Wizards. Like Mauryl, Emuin shifted the ground under his feet and answered questions with questions on an utterly different matter: aim at him, and the shot came back double… and with terrible, dreadful surmises.

He mustered his wits to answer that question, as levelly and patiently and completely as he could: no lies, no evasions with master Emuin… to lead his guide to wrong conclusions served no good at all.

“He was my first guide when I came from Mauryl to Henas’amef. Paisi was. Should I leave him free, sir, counting all you’ve taught me of wizardry, to fall to other influences? Something moved him to bring me to the right place on the right night. As it moved me to settle the fugitives at Althalen.”

“A question, is that? Shouldyou have heeded Paisi in the first place?”

“Do you think Maurylsent him to guide me? Was it his doing?”

“Think you so?” Emuin asked him.

“Who else might?” The impatience in him scarcely restrained his hands from clenching into fists. He wished to leap up and move, tear himself from this uncomfortable confrontation he had provoked.

But he had not sat learning of wizards for no gain. Listening and trying to answer Emuin’s questions was the best course, the only course that would ever bring him an answer.

And it was so, that Mauryl, lost with Ynefel, had reached far, very far with his spells. At one time it had seemed perfectly clear that Hasufin Heltain was the cause of Emuin’s fear. But Hasufin was gone now, was he not?

And yet Emuin seemed more afraid than before.

“Who indeed else would have sent the boy?” Emuin said. “Since no one but Mauryl knew the why and wherefore.”

“Might Mauryl’s wishes for me,” he asked, “have entered into some other pattern, one of, say, someone else’smaking?”

“Troubling thought,” Emuin said faintly, rapping the soup-coated spoon clear on the rim of the pot. “There are so many choices.”

“You.”

“Not to my knowledge. I assure you I had never besought the gods for another student.”

“The enemy… Hasufin.”

“A remote chance,” Emuin said, and plunged the spoon back into the pot. He swung the pot off the fire.

“But you think not.”

“I think not.”

“Paisi himself guided the meeting?”

“Possible, too, remoter still though it be.”

Remote, yes. So he had thought. “Someone should care for the boy,” Tristen said, attempting a diversion of his own, from an area hedid not now want to discuss. “And you lacked a boy. You need a good pair of legs, and he needs a Place, or something else may indeed find him. I think I was right in that.”

“A gift, now drawn into our web. What more?”

“A very little of the gift, I think.”

“Has the calamity of his presence been little? His Reverence sped to Guelessar? And now this boy in my care? Doubly dangerous to be poking and prying around a wizard’s pots with gifted fingers. I had trouble enough with the brothers from Anwyfar, and them scared witless. A gift is not to judge by its surface or its apparent depth. By the waters that churn around him, mark me, this boy is dangerous.”

“He may be,” Tristen said, “but that means he’s dangerous to be wandering free, too, and moiling other waters.”

“Perhaps.”

“He needs a Place, does he not? Is he not more dangerous without a Place?”

“And so you lend him thisone, gods save me. He’ll go through clothes, he’ll eat like a troop of the Guard, and his feet will grow. I do not cook, mind you! Nothing except my own meals.”

It comforted him, that Emuin did not seem as set against Paisi as he had feared, and within the mundane complaints he heard nothing so grievous as their prior discussion. “All that he needs the Zeide has for the asking. And he can cook for you.” Another shift of direction. “He’s running your errands, so I think, to the market, yours as well as mine.”

“I sent him after turnips yesterday.”

“Turnips. Is there some flaw in Cook’s turnips?”

“You’re such a troublesome young man!”

“I fear I’ve become so,” he said sadly. He envied Paisi, to do no more than run a wizard’s errands, and to learn the ways of bird nests, and all such things as had passed his reach. Another boy belonged to Emuin. He did not. He had become something else, as Cefwyn had passed through Emuin’s hands and become something else. A severance had occurred without his seeing it coming.

But he had learned Emuin’s greater lessons: patience, and examination of himself. And what had he interrupted Emuin saying to him: something about turnips and the marketplace?

“Taking in thieves,” Emuin muttered. “Conversing with exiles…”

“Cevulirn came north to discuss Cefwyn’s affairs with me,” Tristen said sharply, “and something very powerful wished to prevent him. I’m all but sure it wasn’t Auld Syes who raised that storm. Tell me again and tell me true: was it you?”

Emuin’s brows lifted in mild wonder, and Emuin did look at him eye-to-eye, his gaze for the moment as clear as glass. “No, not I. Have you another thought?”

“What do youseek in the market?” Tristen asked in Emuin’s style: divert, feint, and under the guard.

“Much the same as your questions to the boy, thank you. Especially the old women have ears, andthe sort of awareness you and I have. They’re a valuable resource, the witches, the wisewomen of Amefel. I’ve used them from time to time. Now you’ve thought of the same resource and asked the right question. Shall I tell you what I know?”

“Yes, sir. If you please.”

“Then look about you: the people have had a rebirth of their faith. So the Bryaltines say. The old symbols appear openly in certain alleys, and people wear charms and set them in their doorways. They hang bells in the wind, so their dimmer ears can hear what we hear in it. All this affronted the good Quinalt father, and scandalized our missing sergeant, I’m sure, gods save his devout soul.” This Emuin said not without sarcasm.

“I suppose I’ve seen it.”

“You know you’ve seen it. You’ve not found it remarkable until I mention it. And in your absence, however brief, the Bryalt father turns out to have gained two nuns of his order, women formerly in the service of the Zeide, who two days ago were prophesying in the street… saying openly that the Sihhë have risen in Henas’amef and in Amefel. And, do you know, they prophesied the rewakening of Althalen?”

Tristen was appalled.

“Oh, and this beforeyou came back to say so, perhaps on the very day you did it. So they have the Sight and have it in good measure. And on thatnews, the good father quit the town and struck out down the road in mortal offense, behind the captain and the sergeants who alsowent to Guelemara. Can you imagine the meeting at Clusyn?”

The monastery where travelers stayed.

“So you’re building at Althalen,” Emuin said, “nuns are in the street foretelling the rise of the Sihhë-lords and the return of the King To Come, and gods save us all… they saw what you were doing.”

He heard. The words echoed in the air, off the walls of events past and present. He heard the hammer strokes of men at work on stone, not uncommon in the Zeide these days; but it echoed work elsewhere, on a ruined wall; he heard the whisper of the wind at the eaves, warning of change in the weather: he heard the running footsteps of a boy on an errand, illusion only, for the boy himself, desperate and afraid of help as well as harm, was well out of the vicinity by now, seeking wood and salt, he had said.

“I have notresettled Althalen, not as a name. I settled a handful of fugitives there, a mere handful of desperate folk wanting shelter from the snow. There were walls to use, and it’s remote from the road. Is that wicked of me?”

“And what more do buildings and walls do, young lord, what do they do more than shelter us from the weather?”

Nothing, was the quick answer; but, no, that was not so, in wizard-craft, and in his heart he knew it: buildings had wards.

And those ruins had the strongest in all of Amefel, the protection of the Lord Regent, Ninévrisë’s father, whose tomb was there. He had chosen Althalen precisely because of that, and it had seemed right. Now Emuin chided him on that very matter, and the whole complexion of his decision shifted.

“They are a Place,” he said. “Lines on the earth.”

“So you have given Place to Elwynim at Althalen. And lo! you have subjects there, Lord Sihhë. You have subjects who are not Amefin, not in our king’s gift, not in authority he gave you. And we have nuns telling visions in the streets. Was this wise?”

He was struck cold and silent, asking himself how things could have so turned about.

“I have,” he admitted after a moment, “likewise ordered the wall restored near Modeyneth. What do you say about that?” But he already knew. He had himself rebuilt the ward there, too, consciously, in defense of Amefel, and never thought of its other significance, as a ward the Sihhë had laid. He had thought of the protection the wards afforded the fugitives. He had not thought of the strength inhabitants gave the wards: Althalen was alive again, and of his doing.

“Thank the gods,” said Emuin, “His Reverence left before he heard this news.”

“I sent a message to Cefwyn from Anwyll’s camp. So has Anwyll, already, once we knew Ilefínian had fallen. The messenger was to ride straight through, not even stopping here. I sent another last night, before I slept. The people that escape Tasmôrden will flee into Amefel. It’s all they can do. But I can’t allow the border to be overrun by troops and fugitives, stealing and slaughtering the villagers. Do justice, Cefwyn told me, and I swore I would. Is it justice to stand aside and let war come here, when I could stop it?”

“Justice is a hard word to define. Kings battle over it.”

Diversion and regrouping. The ground had become untenable. “ Whosestorm was it?”

“ Ihad no wish to prevent your talking to Cevulirn. I had no forewarning, and I would never quarrel with Auld Syes.—Whose was the lightning stroke that drove you from Guelessar?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Was it a wizard? It must be a powerful wizard who could do that. Could it be Auld Syes?”

“I doubt it. Amefel is her concern, and her Place.”

“Yet… conspiracy among the earls, the overthrow of Lord Parsynan… all these things were happening when the lightning came down.”

“None of which His Majesty knew when he sent you. Lightning struck the Quinaltine roof, and you found yourself on the road.”

“So it was not chance, not the lightning, and not Cefwyn sending me.”

“It was, and it was not. Do you know so little of wizardry, young lord? No. I forget you neednot know a damned thing about wizardry. You need not learn anything. Things Unfold to you. Might leaps to your fingertips and all nature bends when you stamp your foot.”

Emuin was exaggerating, vastly so, but reminding him how little he had bent himself to Emuin’s art, and how little he knew of it.

“For us mere Men,” Emuin said in a surly tone, “it’s chance and not chance that such things happen. Learn this: wizardry loads the dice, young lord, but they still can roll against the wall. Surely you know that much. And maybe it’s a flaw in you, that you need not study, but find it all at your fingertips: gods know what you can do.”

“I wish to learn, master Emuin. I wishto be taught. I’ve asked nothing more.”

“Oh, you’ve asked far more, young lord. You’ve asked much, much more. But let us walk together down this path of chance and if and maybe. Let us look at the landmarks and learn to be wise. If there had been no lightning stroke and you had not come, and then Amefel had risen… what would have happened?”

“Calamity.”

“So. But then what did happen?”

“Crissand’s father and his men took the fortress. And then I took it.”

“And Crissand Adiran survived, but his father did not. Was this chance, too? The rebels took the fortress. They died. Two events not necessarily benefiting the same power. Crissand escaped the slaughter. A third event. You seized Amefel. A fourth.”

Not necessarily benefiting the same power.

“Lad,” Emuin gazed straight at him. “Lad, are you listening to what we’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What have I told you?”

“That there may be two powers.”

“No. That there may be more than one.”

“Yes, sir,” he said in utter solemnity. “I do hear.”

“You are one of those powers,” Emuin said. “That’s always worth remembering. Don’t act carelessly. Don’t assume the dice have only one face. It’s only by considering all the faces that you can load one of them. That’swizardry, young lord. That’s why it means learning, difficult, farseeing learning.”

The echoes in the air remained, a brazen, troubling liveliness, as if all events balanced on a point of time and might go careering off in any direction without warning.

“I can swear I didn’t raise the storm or conjure Auld Syes,” Tristen said, grasping at that straw.

“Then reckon at least three with the ability must be involved here,” Emuin said, “and four, young sir, for Ididn’t raise them, either.”

“Lady Orien?”

“Think you so, lord of Amefel?”

Emuin changed salutations and none of it was without significance. It was lessons again. It was a signal to him: he was not at this moment young lord.

And he gave Emuin as honest answers as he had given to Mauryl, last spring, in hope ultimately of revelations about himself such as Mauryl had given him.

“Her dragons lean over me as I write. Lady Orien broke the great Lines there, in that room in particular, when she opened it and let in Hasufin. I repaired them as I could. But I never am at ease in that place.”

“Well, well,” Emuin said, “and well reckoned. Now never after this say that I failed to advise you. I have advised you. Now and at last you may have heard what I say, beyond all my expectations. I have warned you, as best I can.”

“And else?” Tristen asked. “Is Orien all your warning?—Or is it Hasufin?”

Emuin’s charts lay scattered across the table, charts of great sweeping lines and writing that teased his eye with recognition, but that was not the fine round hand Men used nowadays. He moved one, in Emuin’s silence, and made no sense of the parchment, the visible sign of studies Emuin pursued and would not divulge.

“Don’t disarrange my charts, pray. Go raise walls against the law. Chastise the fool boy you’ve given me. I leave it to you. Leave me to my ciphering. Gods! Don’t—”

He had picked up a chart, almost, and let it down again.

“Don’t disarrange them. I’ve enough troubles.”

“Does the order matter? Whatdo you cipher, sir? Wherein is it wizards’ business, all these writings? Do you draw Lines also across the sky and ward the stars, too?”

“None of your concern, young lord! Leave my charts, I say, and go find that wretched boy wizard you freed from a just and deserved hanging. He’s probably filched three purses on his way to the kitchens.”

“He’s mine, at least… that he’s in my care. And his listening in the town is for my sake. And if he helps you, claim duty of him; but he won’t cease to be mine, master Emuin, unless you ask for him. Until you give me reasons, I won’t change it.” His converse with Emuin had skipped from question to question, all around the things he most wished to know, and grew cryptic and uneasy. “Why the stars, sir? What can you hope to find? Or to do?”

“Curiosity. A lifelong study. My diversion. All wizards have such charts.”

“Mauryl did. Parchments, papers, everywhere, and all blown about when the tower fell. I find it curious you have the same study.”

“Mauryl lived centuries. The planets were a passing show to him.”

“And to you, sir?”

“Damn, but we’re full of questions. Question, question, question.”

“So Mauryl taught me. So I learn, sir, or try to. I’ve been respectful and said yes, master Emuin. But you said I should study wizardry. You said I should look at all the faces of the dice.” He understood dismissal, however, in Emuin’s distress and reticence: Emuin wished him gone, so he rose and crossed the room and set his hand on the door, with a backward look at the stone, unplastered chamber, at shelves untidy and groaning under their load, and a bed at least supplied with new blankets.

More blankets were under the bed, where Paisi had tucked a pallet, perhaps; it looked to be that, or a repository of Emuin’s discarded clothes.

“I’m glad you’ve shut the windows,” he remarked in leaving, “and I’m glad you’re not alone here.”

“Bryaltine nuns,” Emuin muttered. “The Sihhë star in the marketplace and hung on pillars, and His Reverence to Guelessar. Don’t surprise Cefwyn with these things. And in your writing to Idrys, apart from Cefwyn, make a thorough job of explaining, lad. Make it very thorough. I’ve no doubt His Reverence will.”

Chapter 7

The senior clerk came to the ducal apartment at Tristen’s request, and proudly presented a thick set of papers, figures, great long lists of carefully penned numbers and tallies. Tristen had found a keen interest in his resources since his venture out to the river and back. He had inquired of his clerk what he had at his disposal.

But this was not the answer, at least not in a form that Unfolded to him. And asking the clerk what the sum of the accounts meant he could buy produced only confusion, a business of owed and received and entitled and the seasonal difficulty with contrary winds in distant Casmyndan, southward.

“Ciphering,” Uwen said, when the clerk had gone, and added with a little laugh, “which I don’t know wi’out I count on my fingers, an’ for large sums I wiggle toes. So I ain’t a help there. I’d best take mysel’ to the horses an’ the men and leave ye to your readin’, which ye don’t lack in that stack.”

“It’s coins. It all stands, for coins, does it?”

“Coins, m’lord. Aye, I reckon, in a way, it does that.”

“Crowns and pennies,” Tristen said, and drew up that sheet of common southern paper, one of a score of papers on which long columns marched in martial order. But not of martial things. “Five hundred crowns and seventy pennies of sheep.”

“’At’s some few sheep,” Uwen said. “An’ ’at there’s why Your Grace has clerks.”

“I have no difficulty with the numbers,” Tristen said, “only this business of pennies and pence coming from them.”

“Pennies and ha’pennies and small pence,” Uwen said, in that quiet, astonished mildness that attended such close, odd questions, “an’ being as we’re in Amefel, the king’s pence an’ th’ old pence an’ the farthing an’ ha’farthing, an’ the king’s reckonin‘ an’ the old reckonin’. All in the market at the same time, in Amefel: no small wonder if ye blink at it.”

“Show me,” he said, pushing the papers across the desk, “if you will. Youunderstand.”

“Good gods, I ain’t the one.”

“The clerk hasn’t helped. Youshow me.”

Nothing had Unfolded, nothing showed any least promise of Unfolding to show him the sense in these papers and accounts, which he had asked for, and he had until the first hour after noon before he should meet with the earls and give his own report.

Uwen obediently came closer, picked up a paper, and looked at it.

“Here’s fine, fair writin’, but the sense of it’s far above me, m’lord.”

“So are farthings and half farthings above me.” Tristen laid his finger on a number on a paper that chanced to be in front of him, that of one fleece. “What’s that to a penny? That one there.”

Uwen craned sideways to look. “That ’un I can show ye.”

“Here.” He swept aside the papers, and found a fair unwritten one. But Uwen, disdaining the pen and the clean sheet, sat down on the other side of the table, emptied out his purse, and showed him how many coppers made a gold crown, and each five coppers a king’s penny, and what was a farthing piece, worth a cup of ale, and why ha’farthings were inthe reckoning but left out of the actual payment because there was no such coin ever minted in the history of the world.

Ha’farthings, a petty sum, did not pay the bill when he considered what the cost was to feed and clothe and house the staff, and then to fit out men-at-arms and build the ruined walls.

And Uwen professed his purse out of coins, and not even one fleece was accounted for.

“Get those in the cupboard,” Tristen said, for he knew there were gold ones there, and silver, and Uwen and he made stacks and piles in order, until they accounted for a whole flock at once.

After that he could look at his list of sheep and know how much gold that was, and therefore how many of those sacks that were in the strong room deep, deep in the heart of the Zeide, where the strongest guard was mounted.