Snow was a word White and Cold and Wet, lying on the ground, clinging to the trees, falling like rain from the skies.

“I know what it is, sir. It comes to me.”

“But you have not seen it.”

“No, sir.”

“Ever?”

“Not that I remember. Perhaps the shutters weren’t open.”

“This is an unnatural business,” Cefwyn said, locking his arms across his chest. “I tell you I have no liking for it. Emuin, can you judge what he says?”

He feared Cefwyn, whose eyes were sometimes cold as Idrys’ eyes, whose voice very often had an edge to it, and whose speech had many, many turns he failed to follow.

But Emuin’s voice was gentle and forgiving. “He was Mauryl’s, my lord Prince, and Mauryl was not wont to lie, whatever his faults.”   “He never stuck at worse acts.”

“Peace,” Emuin said sharply, and turned on Tristen a gentler look.

“Lad, I’ve told you that I knew your master. That he was my teacher, too.

He would not have you lie to me.”

“No, sir,” Tristen answered. “I wouldn’t think so.”

“You have no idea why he died.”

“I don’t know that he is dead, sir.”

“What do you think befell him? Why do you think he might be alive?”

“I don’t know, sir. I know—” It was difficult to speak of his reasons and his guesses. He had never said them aloud. He had persuaded himself not to speak them aloud, not so long as the guards questioned him.

But Emuin said he was Mauryl’s student, too, so surely he should tell Emuin the truth.

“I know that Mauryl believed he would go away somewhere. I thought he meant the Road. He gave me the Book and said he might not have to go if I could read it. But I failed.” It was a difficult failure to admit. He was deeply ashamed and troubled with a thought that had worried at him ever since he had come to the guards’ hands. “Perhaps I was mistaken to go out the gate. Perhaps I was mistaken about when he wanted me to go. I would have asked him, if he were there, sir. I wish I might have asked him.”

“I do not think you were mistaken,” Emuin said, which he was glad to hear. “You did exactly as Mauryl would have had you do, and very wisely, too.”

“I hope so, sir.”

“I am very sure.”

Tears welled up in his eyes and a knot came into his throat. He looked down, because Mauryl had said men did not show their tears, and Mauryl had said he was becoming grown. But the tears escaped him and ran down his face, so he wiped at them surreptitiously, as quickly as he could, and tried to pretend they had never happened.

“You see,” Emuin said to Cefwyn. “He is still a child in many respects.

Mauryl did not gain everything he wanted in his working.”

He had no idea what Emuin meant. He looked to see whether Emuin frowned or not, and in that moment Cefwyn leaned back and folded his arms, regarding him coldly. “You will stay here,” Cefwyn said sternly, and then cast a glance at Emuin. “—How much, then, can he comprehend?”

Heat mounted to Tristen’s face. “Sir, I do understand you.”

“Do you?” Cefwyn seemed always on his guard, as Idrys seemed to be. Perhaps Cefwyn was angry about his mistakes in manners. He knew he had made them, even in recent moments.

“Lad?” Emuin said. “What do you understand?”

“I understand most things, sir, but there are some Words that come slowly, so I lose the sense of them. But,” he added quickly, lest Emuin think he was more trouble than he possibly wished to undertake, even on Mauryl’s wishes,

“I am not slow to learn, sir. Mauryl told me otherwise.”

“Cry you mercy,” Cefwyn said in a breath. “So you do answer for yourself, sir.”

“Yes, sir. —Yes, m’lord.”

“Apprentice to Mauryl?”

Apprentice. It came muddling up out of somewhere. “I think after a kind, m’lord, but—Mauryl called me a student.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I give you liberty of the keep, of all this vast building, will you agree to stay within its walls?”

He suddenly realized Cefwyn was asking him to stay. And Emuin had just said that he had done what Mauryl wished. He began to hope for a turn for the better—that after all he had not failed Mauryl’s order. “Yes, sir,” he said, with all attention, all willingness to obey.

“You will undertake not to speak to others than myself and Emuin, in any regard.”

“I will not speak to others, no, sir.”

“Lad,” Emuin interposed, “Prince Cefwyn means that restriction for your protection. There are some few people about who are not to be trusted, who would use you very deceitfully, and some would do you harm. You must trust the two of us, and only us.”  “Not Idrys, sir?”

“Idrys serves Prince Cefwyn. You may speak to Idrys. He is Lord Commander of the Prince’s Guard. And you may always tell the servants what you want and what you do not. His Highness means simply that you should not converse with chance strangers you meet in the halls.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.” In Ynefel—in all the world before—there had been only Mauryl. He had never had to understand there were safe people and dangerous people, but on his way to this new place he had learned that abundantly, and he was glad to know there was a rule he should follow. It would be ever so much easier to please these men and avoid trouble if he had a rule.

“Good.” Emuin rose and, as Emuin had done before, patted his shoulder in leaving. Cefwyn got up to go, Tristen rose, and Cefwyn delayed to look back, frowning as he studied Tristen from head to foot.

Then Cefwyn shook his head and left, as if he still disappointed Cefwyn’s expectations.

He stood staring at the door after it shut, hands clenched on the back of the chair. He should not, he told himself very firmly, be angry or upset with Cefwyn, who had given him everything he presently had; who had, in fact, given him everything pleasant and good.

Everything ... but welcome.

Their leaving was the first time he had been altogether alone since he had come here last night, the first time he had stood in the middle of a room which—he supposed—was to be his. It was a far, far different and grander room than any Ynefel had had to offer, as large by itself as the downstairs hall at Ynefel. The whole keep had no wooden balconies, but stone floors throughout, which stayed up by some magic, he imagined, and did not tumble down of their own tremendous weight.

But the moment he wondered about it with a clear head, he thought of Arches, and Barrel Vaults, and Coigns and all such Words as masonry and mason-work, and the scaffolds he had seen in the town below, all, all those many Words and memories of the town and Ynefel pouring in on him. Like pigeons fighting over bread, his thoughts were, as he remembered the space outside the walls, and he put his hands to his head and turned all about—finding no more Words, at least, everything safe and known, bed and table and chair and Curtain, indeed, there was a Curtain, of which Ynefel had had none such embellishments.

There was Leading, and Gilding and when, on a quieter breath, he dared look out the window, one knee upon the bench there, he saw, distorted through rippled glass, slate roofs, and chimneys, and, oh, indeed, there were pigeons walking on the ledges.

He went at once to the table and the remnant of his huge breakfast and took bread, and carefully unlatched the little section of the diamond windows that had a separate frame and latch. The pigeons flew away in alarm when it opened, but he put the bread there on the ledge below the glass and trusted they would find it soon.

He was very glad to find them. He wondered were any of them his pigeons, that might also have escaped from Ynefel.

He wondered whether Owl would come, and what place there might be in this place that would be possible for Owl to sleep by day, as Owl preferred to do. Perhaps there was a loft somewhere in the buildings nearby. Perhaps there was a loft even in the Kathseide itself. He stood and watched, and, certain enough, the pigeons gained courage to come close, and then advanced to the roof slates below the window, and landed on the sill beyond the diamond-glass panes. He was very still, as he had learned to be in the loft at home, and watched them make short work of the bread.