But he would not be so set about hereafter. And he had not at all given up Tristen, or Emuin, or any of his friends. They were where they needed to be. If a king could push and prod wizardry into working for him, then he had made a necessary move, and moved wizards where fools would threaten them at their peril. Let him get the reins of power firmly in his hands, and then he would remember every favor and every score that wanted remembering. His grandfather, entombed in the Quinaltine yonder, had had the barons in fear of him when he was alive. He, like his grandfather, had faced armies. Could he not, in his turn, daunt a paltry handful of court gossips? The servants, the court, the Quinalt… no one would have dared tempt king Selwyn as his barons had tempted him. And they were not as clever as they hoped.
His father Ináreddrin had learned only two tactics: playing one rival against another, which his grandfather had done very skillfully, and compromising—compromising constantly to secure his own safety: he saw it very plainly from the vantage of this bitter morning, this window he had looked out since childhood. Ináreddrin had set northern Quinalt against southern Teranthines, northern barons against southern barons, son against son and devised a clever path through their objections—but, again, he had always resolved matters not by decision but by compromising what he wanted. Son against son on the other hand had been easier game—give the elder son no love. Give the younger son, Efanor, all honor, all credit with the northern barons, knowing very well he was robbing his own heir of support. What was it to him? He’d be dead and in his tomb when the account came due.
And lo! his father indeed died and here was he, standing at the same window, facing the same decisions, making choices his father should have made with an iron hand.
But not entirely recklessly. He longed to go down and at least bid Emuin safe journey as the old man was setting out. But then the very point of sending Tristen away was to still the rumors, and if the barons thought him weak and biddable, let them think it only for another dozen days. He should not go to Emuin.
Quiet the rumors, give Tristen the winter in Amefel, give the realm the feeling of real danger on the border, oh, and then the Quinalt would see magic much differently. Gods, gods, but he looked forward to sending a few lords on horseback through the mud and brambles and into the range of bowmen and see whether they did not soon view Tristen of Ynefel as their very savior.
The king being angry, the king’s servants would not come near him. But the tread that crossed the floor behind him now, soft and with the whispered grate of armor, he knew: he took no alarm, and saw a grim, dark-mustached reflection in the glass.
“Well?” he asked that reflection.
“Things are as well done as may be,” Idrys said, “m’lordking.”
“Satisfied, are we?”
“Mauryl’s heir has grown far cannier, and more adept than many think. Send him back to the nest and he will grow indeed again. But he is still the innocent, in many ways. I authorized forty silver, by the by, for Uwen a horse.”
“A horse.” In the depth of his melancholy, in the tottering of Marhanen rule in Guelessar, he found an act of Tristen’s still to astound and amuse him.
“A mare. A surplus of the guard mounts. A fine horse, as happens. I applaud Uwen’s eye.”
He almost found it in him to laugh. “Good gods, I give him a province and thatwas his concern.”
“Oh, I daresay he had many concerns, but this was the one he could reach, to please a man he trusts. I approve his reasoning.”
Idrys’ speech was sometimes barbed, sometimes indirect, rarely straight to the point. For Idrys, this was blunt. And Cefwyn was less amused.
“I take your lesson, master crow.”
“You confound your enemies, Majesty. They never foresaw his appointment to Amefel, I do agree. And the fools among them imagine Ynefel will go quietly to his tower and become absent for a few decades of years, like Mauryl.”
“Tristen will not,” he found himself saying, and in the ghostly reflection saw Idrys’ implacable visage. “Should I fear him?” he asked, perhaps because in the strangeness of the day and the stripping away of his resources, fear did occur to him, the barons’ fear, the fear of Guelenfolk, of all the north… and his own fear, deep and little confessed. “I don’tfear him, master crow. There is no malice in him, nor ever has been. And what I’ve done, Ichoose. The hell with them all.”
“I should be remiss if I did not point out—”
“ Damn your pointing out, Idrys!” He spun to face his Lord Commander. He had by no means meant such an outburst. It had been waiting all night and all morning.
And Idrys looked not at all surprised to receive it, saying smoothly, imperturbably, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Neither ambition, nor self-will, nor greed for land. None of these things move him, Idrys. He is the best man ever I knew.”
“He is not a man,” Idrys countered him. “As m’lord king may well remember.”
“A man in all points but birth.”
“Oh, aye, a birth… thatsmall matter.”
“Damn you, I say.”
“As Your Majesty may please,” Idrys said, and for some few moments they stood side by side, overlooking the workers who assayed the Quinalt roof, like the movement of ants in the sunlight.
It might have been any ride they had ever taken in Guelessar, though at a slow and plodding pace, the banners comfortably furled and cased now that they were out of sight of other men. The banner-bearers talked together in quiet voices, alike .the Guard, riding behind them, Captain Anwyll with his aides.
At their first rest Uwen changed off to Liss to ride, and gave Gia a rest.
“Two fine horses,” Uwen said, in delight at the mare, fairly beaming. And then, soberly, and blushing, “M’lord, it were still very good of ye.”
“If I can please no one else,” Tristen said, “I would please you.”
Uwen blushed, bright red. “M’lord.”
He wished he had not said that. He knew not what to say to soften it.
“His Majesty’s given ye a province, m’lord. And in the Quinalt’s eye. The northern lords’, too. We’ll be back again. Ye’ll see His Majesty by spring, and ’twixt me and you, the town will be cheered up by then.”
“He had to take Sulriggan back.”
“Oh, well, but sooner or later he’d have to, and His Majesty knew it an’ Sulriggan knew it. It was sooner, is all, by about a couple of months, and ye can lay to it his lordship Sulriggan’ll catch cold before any battle. He probably wishes His Majesty had stayed choleric until after the war and never would call on him at all, but there wasn’t a chance of that, anyway, so all he gets is a few months to work his way back into better graces. The Holy Father has a rotten weak reed of a cousin in Sulriggan, that’s the truth, and whoever relies on him, His Majesty’ll chew him up bones and all.”
“Perhaps he will,” Tristen said. “At least I doubt Efanor will believe Sulriggan again.”
“His Highness has his eyes open more than some thinks,” Uwen said, and for a time they rode talking of Efanor, and then recalling Amefel and thereby the stables in Amefel, and wondering whether they could improve the drainage in the stables sitting at the bottom of the hill.
Perhaps, Tristen thought, Cefwyn had not been entirely unwise to send him south. Very near Cefwyn’s apartment, amid all the gathering of the court, he dared not even wonder what Cefwyn was doing, or how he fared or whether the land was safe… dared not until he was far from the walls. But today, at this distance from the men around him and in command of the column as it was, he simply drew a deep breath, reached, and the world was wider by half again. He was aware of Uwen, of the horses, of all the men and all the patient oxen, even of the wheeling hawks that soared, fearless of the chill autumn winds, looking for mice or sparrows.