“Sir?” The head came up, the eyes met his, and that moment was indeed almost back, that intense, that unbearable innocence—so appalling and so unprecedented that a man was drawn to keep looking, wishing to be sure, from heartbeat to heartbeat, that it was truly there or had ever been there.

But he could not find it again, not with the same force. Perhaps the young man did have secrets. Perhaps the young man had discovered them in himself, and was not quite so innocent.

Or perhaps he had found that his hosts were not what he had hoped.

“Aman.”

“Your Highness?”

“This young man is not to be harmed in any way. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” There was true commitment in that answer.

Aman knew when the Prince of Ylesuin was completely serious, and when default would entrain sure consequences.

“Idrys. The west wing, the blue room.”

“My lord Prince, —”

“Idrys. The west wing. The blue room.”

“Yes, my lord Prince.”

“Tristen.”

“My lord?”

A change. An awakening to proprieties. A wit wakening—or a pretense abandoned. It could betoken lies. Or utter ignorance. Cefwyn did not so much as blink. “Tristen, these several honest men will take you to a room, and servants there will provide you whatever you reasonably need. Your requests will be moderate, I trust .... “

“Supper?”

“Assuredly.” One did not interrupt the Prince of Ylesuin when he was speaking. There were breaths bated. Not his. He became imperturbable.

And equally plain-spoken. “I also suggest hot water.” The young man looked to have been accustomed to cleanliness—and if he had himself walked five days and five nights through the woods, as the youth had claimed to have done, a bath would have ranked foremost among his requests.

“I would be very grateful, my lord.”

Ah. Politeness. Courtly politeness. And a moment, all unanticipated, to set the hook.

“These things,” Cefwyn said, “if you will answer a question.”

“Sir?” Back to the first mistakes of protocol, in such an audience.

And in an eyeblink, the young man’s self-possession began to fray about the edges. In vain, perhaps, the guards’ knocking-about: threats of harm had not shaken the youth’s composure or come near the truth.

But now, in the diminishing of threats, the offering of comfort—then the abrupt withholding of it—the young man’s voice trembled.

Not a chance tactic. Nor kind. No more kind than a prince could afford to seem, in getting at the facts of a case.

“A simple question, Tristen. An easy question.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Who sent you?”

“Mauryl, sir.”

“Is that the truth I am to believe?”

A hesitation. A careful, apparently earnest, rethinking. “No, sir.”

“What is true, then?”

“Mauryl said to follow the Road.”

“And?”

“Nothing more, sir. Only to follow the Road. I thought—”

“Go on, Tristen with no name. You thought—”

“Thought, since the Road came here, through the gate, that this must be the place he meant me to be.”

Mauryl’s student. Possibly. The young man could dice his reasons quite, quite finely, point by point, and say what he chose to say. A common villager did not do that. It came of courtly records. Priestly teaching.

And a prince could parse reasons down the list—I, thou, he, whence, why, and to what end—quite, quite well on his own.

“And for what purpose, Tristen of no name, did Mauryl Gestaurien send you—ah!—bid you to take to the Road?”  “He never told me that.”

“Did he say—go left or go right?”

“No, sir. It only—seemed—as the gate showed me.”

“And Mauryl is not well, at the moment.”

“No, sir.”

“In what way is he not well?”

“He—” Clearly they had reached an abrupt precipice of reason. Or a brutal wall of understanding. “I—saw his face above the door. In the wall, my lord. Like—like the other faces.”

From an improper ‘sir’ to a presumptuous ‘my lord.’ And on such a chilling declaration. There was consternation at various points about the hall. He hoped there was none from him—he tried at least to maintain calm. The matter of the faces was well-rumored, the work of the last Galasieni—or the succession of Mauryls all hight Gestaurien: accounts varied, none of which he had taken as truth, and he would not be daunted, not by the claim, not by the innocence in the voice.

“Like the other faces. Most remarkable. Or not, in that venue. Do casual strangers inhabit the walls? Or only outworn wizards?”

“I—have no idea, sir.”

“Are you a wizard yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“What are you, then? Beggar, servant, —priest of unwholesome  gods?”

“No, sir.” The gray gaze was frightened, now, as if this Tristen were

“The truth, Tristen from Ynefel, as you wish my hospitality. Are you a wizard?”

“No, sir.”

“And what is in this book?”

“He said I should read it. I make some sense of the letters, but I don’t know the words. —Can you read it, sir?”

Trapper became trapped—in an earnestness, an expectation he had never met in anyone.

“A few words.” He by no means could do even that. “Surely Emuin knows more. —Perhaps he would teach you—if you asked.”  “I hope so, sir.”

“What did Emuin say to you regarding it?”

“He said I shouldn’t answer the guards’ questions any longer. He said I should come with him, and he would see you took care of me.”

“Did he?” He cast a look toward Emuin, standing, hands folded in his sleeves and looking like the fabled cat in the creamery. “And why would I take care of you?”

“I suppose because you’re master here, sir.”

“If he said so, why, of course it must bind me, must it not, master Emuin? —Believe him, young traveler. Like Idrys, there, do you see?

Idrys is a very grim fellow—a very dangerous fellow. But if he likes you well, and if I say so, nothing will ever come close to you in this hall that would harm you, do you follow me?”

Tristen looked briefly askance at Idrys, and seemed not in the least reassured. “Yes, sir.”

“I promise you.” He let go the book into Tristen’s keeping, locked his hands across his lap. “Idrys, take our guest upstairs. —Aman, thank you, and thank your captain for the astuteness at last to call Emuin. Good night, gods attend, back to your posts, all. —And, Emuin,...”

Emuin was, ghostlike, halfway past the door he had not ordered opened. Emuin stopped still, and ebbed silently back into the audience chamber while Idrys took their guest and the guards away out the selfsame door and out of his immediate concern.

“I take it,” Cefwyn said as the door was shutting again, leaving himself and Emuin alone, “you do read somewhat of the book in question.”

“I say we should go riding tomorrow.”

Not to discuss within walls, Emuin meant.

“Not a word tonight, old master?”

“Not on this.”

“A caution?”

Emuin walked from the door to the dais and stopped, arms folded. “In specific? You are in danger.”

“From him?” He sprawled backward, legs apart, the calculated image of his student, sullen self. “Master Emuin, surely you jest.”

“I swore, no more students. I’ll not have you acting the part. Gods, you affront me!”

“I affront you, good sir. Whence this midnight call, with no counsel, and now my decisions affront you? Now we have dire secrets? I am not fond of being led.” He thumped one booted ankle onto the other. “I am not fond of being hastened into conclusions, nor of having advice presented me on the trembling, crumbling verge of decision, nor of being a pawn of others’ ambitions, which—” An uplifted finger, forestalling objection. “—of course the Teranthine Brotherhood does not possibly have, nor you within the brotherhood, nor Idrys toward me, nor, gods know, the captain of the night guard, whatsoever, toward anyone. So I confess myself entirely nonplussed, master Emuin. Why the book, why the secrecy, why this midnight alarum out of the hearing of my more slugabed courtiers?”