“I had no wish to win, sir.”

It made Emuin laugh, the crashing together of a thousand wrinkles, and then a quick settling. “It is no contest, else. I know my measure. Learn yours. You will not learn it by cheating for myside, young lord. Play your own.”

He felt a heaviness in the air then, as if the room had swung round, as if the heavens had wheeled full about, not that a thing was true now that had not been true a moment before, but that he sat at a further remove from the world, looking on a small stone room, piled high with clutter, at a young man and an old one, with a board on the table between them, and all at once the banging of the door below, the clatter of his guards getting to their feet outside and challenging someone.

Emuin looked toward the door with a playing piece in his hand, and paused. Whoever had come had engaged Uwen and the guards quietly, after clumping up the stairs, and then the latch of the door moved.

An officer had arrived: Pryas was his name, a king’s messenger.

“Your lordship,” the man said, and already Tristen had begun to rise from his chair, with the sure foreboding that something had changed in his quiet existence, and that some disaster had befallen. “Your lordship, His Majesty bids you know, although he has had no time to set his seal to it as yet, your lordship is made duke of Amefel, and set over that province, your lordship to be provided troops and staff, wagons and guards, horses to a sufficient number, and all honor. Your lordship must swear to His Majesty tomorrow noon for Amefel, with public ceremony, and depart for your lordship’s capital the same hour.”

He heard. He felt the wood of the chair under his right hand. He was aware of Emuin getting to his feet. Of Uwen regarding him with fear. There was no hint now that Uwen might have drunk any great deal, neither he nor Lusin nor his other guards.

“How shall I answer?” he asked Emuin, not that he was unwilling to obey Cefwyn, but that the implications of the moment stretched beyond his understanding.

For two months Amefel had been under the king’s viceroy, Lord Parsynan, and Cefwyn had declined to depose Lady Aswydd in her exile, refusing to change that arrangement to a permanent grant of the province, refusing to decide on any claimant.

And what of Lady Orien Aswydd? Some had said she should be beheaded. Her brother had been beheaded and burned for his crimes, and Lady Orien was far from innocent of malice against the Crown. Had Cefwyn decided, then, she should die? He would be very sorry if that were so.

“I shall not advise you,” Emuin said.

At the same time there arose a great deal more clatter below. More men were coming up the winding stairs, and there was no way for more than two men to occupy any step or for more than three to stand in the doorway, even sideways.

“There’s Annas come in below, m’lord,” Uwen said. “An’ two of His Majesty’s pages.”

“His Majesty’s staff,” Pryas said, “His Majesty’s officers to arrange the wagons and all, as many as necessary, all His Majesty’s household to assist your lordship in the particulars and orders tonight.”

“I shall pack, then,” Tristen said, envisioning taking Petelly and Gery, his two light horses, and a bundle of clothes, with Uwen—Uwen would go with him, he was sure of that. But troops and staff, wagons and guards? The enormity of the undertaking began to dawn on him. Should he have Tassand, then? Would he have to leave his servants behind? They were a presence he had come to rely on, even to enjoy for their wit and their company.

And what would he tell the viceroy in Amefel? That he was dismissed? Or what wouldbecome of Orien Aswydd and her sister?

“Pack, is it?” Emuin said in a faint voice. “Pack, should we?”

“Shall you go, sir?”

“Pack. Pack for the gods’ love! Yes, I shall go. How should I not go? Sends us to Guelessar for two months and sends us back again in a thunderstorm… what in the gods’ good mercy is the boy doing?”

He meant Cefwyn. Emuin was never much on protocols.

“Do you know why we’re sent, sir?” Tristen asked of the king’s herald, and the man answered quietly,

“On account of the Quinalt roof, your lordship, as seems likely, but I have no word from His Majesty, except that we need a count of wagons from your lordship, how many your lordship may require.”

The Quinalt roof, Tristen thought, and when he asked himself what might involve both the Quinalt roof and his sudden dispatch to Amefel, as Emuin had said, in a thunderstorm, then he knew indeed that the great clap of thunder had been more than noise.

Amefel, then. But it was not as bad as could be. The king was safe. He could not feel any joy in his appointment, nor quite sorrow, either, at being sent south. But Men said winter was a season of little traveling. He contemplated the pieces on the board, thinking that the king had just moved pieces, too, in a strategy directed steadfastly at freeing Elwynor and defeating Tasmôrden. And that was well, too, and he was glad of it. He saw movement as on a battlefield. Danger came clear to him, danger in his separation from Cefwyn, and that distressed him; yet there was nothing he could do. He had deluded himself two nights ago with hope of change back to the way things had been, with hope of being invited again into closeness with Cefwyn, and with Ninévrisë, and now, unexpectedly—this.

But as on a battlefield or a gaming board, not every movement needed be straight to the mark. Many games could come of a fixed number of squares. And not all moves were down a straight line.

“I shall have your answers, sir,” he said to Pryas, “at least I shall send word about the wagons when I’ve asked my staff.”

“Your lordship,” Pryas said, and took his leave, as quietly as a man could on a stairs crowded with his guard.

But Annas came up then to fill the vacancy, informing him of a thousand things that had to be done immediately. Emuin was clearly distressed, fussing about, putting charts into stacks.

So all that the two of them had done or thought of doing was upended, every plan set aside. He would not march with the king to the riverside this winter, or even in the spring. No. Far from it, he would be in Heryn Aswydd’s place. He would be in charge of the province the Guelenfolk least trusted—and he knew the histories of lords, the bloody necessities, the cruel certainties. He had felt them Unfold to his comprehension as war and the use of a sword had Unfolded to his hand, and he knewthe duty that was set on him. It rose up like dark waters, it flowed over him, a necessity, a charge from a friend, a duty to the Amefin villages, the people of the town. Cefwyn made this duty his. And could he do otherwise, now, than go to Amefel?

Annas talked to him of the necessity for provisions, clothing, the ordering of his servants, the staff that he should take with him, rather than relying on the Amefin, who had been restive and uncooperative with the king’s viceroy. He should have his own cook, his own pages, all these people brought in from Guelessar. So Annas said.

“The cook in the Zeide was very kind to me,” he said quietly and in absolute certainty. “I have no wish for any other. And if I am duke of Amefel,” he said to Annas, “should not the pages all be Amefin?”

Annas fell silent then a moment, as if he were thinking and rethinking his needs. And remeasuring him. “Still,” Annas said, “you will keep Tassand.”

“I would wish to keep Tassand,” he said, heartfelt truth. “And Uwen will go with me. I would wish Uwen to go.”

“No question of that, m’lord,” Uwen said, and he had had no doubt of it. But as regarded the rest, Tristen stood in the mad whirl of change and preparation, feeling by no means as lost or as desperate as he had been in the fall of Ynefel, but feeling that bits and pieces were falling about him all the same, the second home he had had, as it were, falling in ruin and broken timbers—but this time he was no lostling, bewildered by the world. This time he knew where he was going and what his resources were.