“Young m’lord,” Aren said. “Ye know ye ain’t permitted down there wi’ the horses.”

But he was already on his way, and his guards followed. “Only from the steps,” he said, walking backward for a breath, then hurried down the hall and ran down the stairs, his guard overtaking him on the way.

The lower floor was echoing with activity, the doors at the middle of the hall were wide open, and when he went out to the great south steps, which he had never attempted to visit before, the courtyard was echoing and a-clatter with horses. He heard shouts and curses, not the angry sort, but the sort of curses men made when there was haste and good humor about a task. He went halfway down the broad steps before one of his guards interposed his arm and stopped him.

“Just a little further,” he asked of them, but they drew him over to the side, out of the jostling current of people coming up and down on business; and held him there—until straightway they fell into conversation with some of the soldiers waiting for a captain who had not shown up.

He watched the gathering of horses, and the men climbing into saddles, sorting out weapons and banners; it was bright and it was noisy, a show he would have been curious and delighted to see if he were not so achingly unhappy with the reason of it.

Emuin had shown him a way that he might find him even in a commotion like this if he really, truly wished-    No, he said to himself, that was not so. Emuin had said that it was dangerous to do and to do it only if he really, truly needed to reach him.

So he stood, doing as people had told him—until—just at the very bottom of the steps he saw Emuin walking past, and he moved two steps down before he even thought that he was testing the limits of his guards’ patience.

But Emuin had looked up and beckoned to him, so on that permission he ran down as far as the bottom of the steps.

“Remember what I told you,” Emuin said, taking him by the arms.

“Yes, sir,” he said. He looked Emuin in the face and saw neither disapproval nor anger, but anxiousness; and he wanted never to be the cause of Emuin’s concern. “Mauryl taught me about dangers, and to shutter the windows.”

“The Zeide has no shutters,” Emuin said. “But be careful of dark places, young lord.”

“I shall,” he said earnestly. “Please, please be careful, master Emuin.”

“I shall, that,” Emuin said, embraced him again, this time with a fervor Emuin had denied him yesterday, and walked on toward the tall, spotted horse they were holding ready for him.

Emuin climbed up, then, with a groom’s help. The mounted soldiers closed about, the Zeide gates opened, and the column filed out with a brisk clatter of horses’ hooves.

In the same moment Tristen found his guards near him again, ready to reclaim him, and he climbed calmly halfway up the steps with them, then stopped to look back at the last of the column.

The iron gates clanged shut. His guards began to talk again to the soldiers standing there. All real reason for him to be in the yard was done, and most people were going up the steps and inside or off through the courtyard toward the stables, but he had nowhere urgent to go.

A darkness touched the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw Idrys frowning down at him from the landing.

So did his guards see, and looked chagrined, caught in serious fault, Tristen feared. He went up the steps in company with them, as Idrys’ cold eyes stayed fixed on him the while.  “It was my fault, sir.”

“Do you take the prince’s order lightly? A matter to ignore at will?”

“No, sir,” he said. He feared that Idrys would do something to restrict the freedom he did have. Or that Idrys would unfairly blame his guards.

But Idrys went inside the doors ahead of them, and did not look back.

“That were good of you, m’lord,” Syllan muttered, and Aren said,

“Aye. It were, that, m’lord.”

“It was my fault,” he maintained, because it was, although he was also glad to have seen Emuin at least once more, and glad to have had that embrace of Emuin, which made him feel that Emuin did care for him and would, truly, be there at his need.

But he said no more of it, since the guards were supposed to say nothing at all and were breaking another order.

He went to the garden then, and found it as trafficked as usual. People laughed and talked, where there was often quiet for thinking. It seemed as if everyone who had taken leave of ordinary business to see Emuin leave now congregated to gossip about Emuin and his reasons, and they stood about in clusters, chattering together in voices they wanted not to carry.

But the garden, usually his refuge, reminded him only that Emuin would not chance here again, in this place which had, to him, seemed overwhelmed by Emuin’s presence and now was dimmed and made small by his absence.

He would not abandon the birds, who looked for him. But he went away after he had fed them, and took to his room.

He read, sitting on the bench in the light of the diamond-paned window, with the latched section, not even large enough to put his head out, open beside him. He had lured the pigeons almost as far as the inside sill, but the boldest was still too wary. He had a secret cache of bread crumbs, which he set out on that windowsill now and again. That was his day’s entertainment.

He thought, too, that Idrys must have spoken sternly to his guards, because they were very quiet and had kept their eyes downcast when he walked back with them from the garden.

The next and the next days were as lonely, and as silent. He truly needed speak to no one. The servants brought him food, in which he had no choice, nor knew how to ask—it was delicate fare, on which he was certain the kitchen had spent much effort, but he picked over the plates with diminishing appetite, and on the third evening after Emuin’s departure he rejected his supper entirely save for a bit of bread, which seemed enough.

Servants cared for his clothing. Servants renewed the candles. When, in his desperate loneliness, he ventured to bid a servant good day, that man flinched and bowed and turned away; knowing he had caused his guards a reprimand, he feared to speak to the guards more than to say where he would go, and they kept very silent now, even among themselves.

Owl hadnever come. That was better for the pigeons, but he was sad to lose Owl. He reckoned Owl. probably hung about .... Owl last, at the edge of Marna, where the bridge w~. ~rh ....... b~and small creatures on the shore, on which Owl could make his suppers, and Owl had likely become a terror about the bridge, Shadow that he was. He hoped that Owl was well.

Came a fourth morning, when he went down the stairs to begin his day of wandering about, in the escort of his guards, and he stopped and lingered at the foot of the stairs, lost and wholly out of heart this morning for the ordinary course of his walks, finding nowhere to go, nowhere at all he cared to go, nothing that he cared any longer to do, or see, or ask of anyone.

He walked down the hall, watching the patterns in the marble at his feet, finding shapes in them, knowing his guards trailed him as always, protected him as always, deterred conversation as always.

“Sir Tristen,” a soft, light voice hailed him, a forbidden voice, ahead of him in the hall.

He had no choice but look up—his heart having skipped a beat and reprised with dread of Idrys’ displeasure. It was, as he feared, Lady Orien; but now he saw two Oriens, the very same, hair quite as red, both alike in green velvet corded with gold, and both smiling at him.

“I mustn’t speak with you,” he said, and started to go down the hall away from them, but with a rustle of her skirts, Orien—or was it truly Orien?—closed the gap between them and hung on his shoulder, smiling at him.

“Tristen,” she said. “Where, in such a hurry? Musty books?”