“My lord Sihhë,” Crissand began, and would have sunk back to one knee.

And must not. Tristen seized him by both arms this time and looked him straight in the eye. “ Your Graceis the title I own. I hold it from His Majesty, his gift, no other.”

“My lord, then,” Crissand said faintly as Tristen set him back. “At your will.”

“What I willis a secure border. Heryn Aswydd collected too much tax and spent too much money on dinnerplates. Amefel will muster in the spring and set the Lady Regent on the Regent’s throne in Ilefínian. Thatis what I will, sirs.”

The latter part was certainly no news to them. Cefwyn had made no secret of his plans, not even from Tasmôrden. He looked out over the assembled earls, saw great sobriety and consternation at his bluntness and at Crissand’s, and perhaps a reassessment of Tasmôrden’s offers of alliance.

“Some think me foolish,” he said to the earls, “and that may be; but I am a fool far less often these days than I was this summer, and I do learn, sirs. I know, for instance, that many Amefin houses have far closer ties across the river than to Ylesuin. If Ylesuin sets Elwynor safely on her throne, then your villagers will walk across the river bridges by broad daylight and trade as you wish. But if Tasmôrden comes, he will make Amefel his battlefield. That is the truth, sirs.”

There was not a word of objection.

And he had nothing more to say or do here, and wished nothing more now than to go to his own bed, and to have ease of the belts and weapons he had borne now for a day and a night… or was it morning?… with no ease of them. Crissand’s loyalty would stay or it would go. The gray space was utterly roiled, seething with yea and nay and hazard, and he wished Crissand Adiran out of his vicinity before his unsteady wits did lasting harm and willed something unwise.

“Good night,” he said. No one moved for a breath or two, and then one and the other bowed and edged cautiously backward, as if they were each hesitant to be the first to leave. Crissand gazed at him, and in the gray space, winds blew, changing direction on the instant.

Then Crissand bowed his way away from the dais, the guards that had brought him in all standing in uncertainty.

Tristen shook his head at the sergeant, wishing him not to detain the earl of Meiden, or to interfere with him.

And for the rest, he knew no more elaborate ceremony or more ready escape than Cefwyn’s habit, which was to walk out by the lord’s door, that nearest the dais. He gathered up Uwen, Anwyll, a trail of guards, the clerks, and then Tawwys and Syllan outside in the hall at the same time as the earls and clerics had to sort themselves out by the other door a small distance away.

None of the earls, however, ventured near to trouble him, and shielded what they said with turns of their shoulders and furtive glances as they hurried to be away, either seeking safer nooks of the Zeide in which to gossip, or going home as the court would, by the stable-court stairs and the West Gate.

Tristen walked, instead, aware of the dismay of his own guards, toward the center of the building, where the South Court doors let in and where the confluence of stairways gave a choice of upward directions.

“What shall we do wi’ Lord Meiden?” Uwen asked him as he approached that point of choice.

“Let him go,” Tristen said. But all his soul said there was profound danger in Crissand Adiran… Crissand Aswydd, for Aswydd he surely was. “Let him go where he pleases.”

So he ordered. But if Uwen were Idrys, and if he were Cefwyn, then he would know that Meiden would not do anything unwatched, and he would never have to hear of it or trouble his soul unless there was reason.

But Uwen was not Idrys, and he realized only then that he truly had no check on his mercy, and no man to do the dark, the unpleasant things. Uwen asked, perceiving the threat, but Uwen would be grieved to slip furtively about when his lord had made a public show of setting Crissand free on his honor. He had to order it if it would be done, while Idrys would have done it even if his liege had strictly forbidden him.

And he found himself at a pass that Cefwyn with his resources would never have come to. He had given a pledge. Was he now to break it himself? Such things, he being not a Man, had more than ordinary consequence, and he, not being a Man, had more than ordinary need of a Man to do the unpleasant work and examine the dark corners.

They walked by the light of stub candles in sconces up and down the lower hall. The Zeide’s servants had appeared out of whatever holes they had hidden in, and candles were not everywhere, as yet, but there were enough lit at enough points to show the servants working end to end of the hall, sweeping and polishing evidence of death from the stones of Hen Amas.

Theywere the true caretakers of this Place, he thought: lords proposed and disposed and worried about the proprieties and the rights of things, but they mopped the dust and the blood away and made it possible to forget the worst of events.

It was one more change of lords for them, in this year yet unended. There had been four, already, since summer, counting the lord viceroy—who might be the departing rider he heard out in the courtyard, through weapon-scarred doors now closed for the sake of warmth.

The lord viceroy was gone.

He was the fifth lord, in one year.

And in that realization he found himself approaching a scatter-witted weariness. Was it hunger he felt at this hour, or thirst or merely winter chill? His body failed to inform him. Down the corridor ahead, past the great hall, was the ghostly boundary of the mews. There were dead men in the ducal apartment above. There was the lord viceroy’s ungathered baggage in the other lordly residence, that which Cefwyn had used up the other stairs. He longed for his own old, modest dwelling on the uppermost floor, but he who had to fear that wizardry supported his wishes had no hope of recovering that apartment save by arranging a calamity to someone else… as surely someone else was residing there now. He was equally sure the duke of Amefel had to occupy some other residence: Uwen would never let him choose something so small and modest and entirely adequate, nor would Emuin.

Nor, for that matter, would Cefwyn.

Cefwyn. Cefwyn. Cefwyn. Therewas the question tonight. But it was not a question he could solve by thinking on it, not with wits muddled with a day’s riding and a night such as they had just spent. He felt tremors in all his body, a desperate need of sleep.

“Which rooms shall I use?” he asked Uwen, as they reached that choice between the stairway on the left, that led to Cefwyn’s former rooms, and that on the right, that led up to the Aswydd bedchambers. “Where shall I sleep?” His own question sounded plaintive in his ears. He was lost as a child, and Uwen shepherded him toward the right-hand stairs.

“They’ve been preparin’ the Aswydd rooms,” Uwen said. “The servants ha’ been at it for an hour now, a great lot of ’em. It’s safest. We ain’t searched every hall and nook, nor will have, maybe for days, so’s ye should have a care for the dark places an’ never go wi’out me, not even wi’ Guelen troops: wi’ me, lad, or maybe Lusin an’ the rest, but no others, noothers, no matter how well ye know ’em.”

CHAPTER 3

The apartment smelled of burning cedar and polishing oils. The chair by the tall, green-curtained windows might never have held a dead man—all the dead were gone, to what burial place Tristen had not asked. The servants, working under close guard, had indeed changed the place in very little time, and most significantly there was not a cup, not a bowl, not a vessel or utensil to be seen on any shelf. Guards were in every room, too, standing watch, so that the rooms had not the desolate feeling they might have had after the events of this bloody night: Syllan had taken command of the detachment at the door, while Lusin was off inquiring into things that had to be inquired into regarding the horses and the stables.