Emuin had finally reached their camp at Assurnbrook, no further.
— I am here, he said to master Emuin; and at last, fearfully, had a sense of presence far away. I am safe, sir.
But Emuin seemed fast asleep, despite the daylight outside. He found himself no longer angry, no longer desperate. All decisions were made, and it was to Emuin’s dreams he spoke, at a time when the gray space seemed small and cramped and cold.
—I think of Owl. Have I told you of Owl, sir? I think I have become Owl, in a manner of speaking.
—The soldiers with us take good care of me, but among the soldiers, I am Owl.
—Even to Uwen, I am Owl, now; and he has no idea what I may do. I think he fears me. He never did, and never have I wished him to.
—Earl Edwyll attempted to hold the town against us, did you know? And the earl died, in Lady Orien’s apartment. I fear they have all conspired against Cefwyn, each for his own advantage, but I have made them a way to say they never did, so now they will try to make it the truth.
—The earl’s son surrendered to us, with his men, and he has sworn to me. He likely knows all the men the earl dealt with, on this side of the river and the other. I’ve set Uwen to find that out. Uwen wishes to protect my innocence. But what of his?
—The earl’s son, Crissand is his name, called me lord Sihhë in everyone’s hearing, and swore to me. I accepted the oath.
There was quiet, profound quiet in the gray space.
—And you are afraid, master Emuin. You have been afraid since summer’s end, since we won at Lewenbrook and drove Hasufin from the field.
—Of what are you afraid? Of the Edge? Is it anything so simple?
—Why did you not stay in Guelemara, if you will not answer me? Do you oppose me? You said that you still could.
—There might be virtue in that. To the best that I have found, Efanor’s little book has no secrets for me. I doubt what I should do. I find no advice in it—or in you, sir.
—I wonder whether anything I have ever led Uwen to is good.
CHAPTER 4
They were not astir until broad day, when the servants arrived with a very late breakfast and an escort of Dragon Guard flung the heavy green draperies back on frost-rimmed windows. The Eagle banner on the gatehouse roof opposite flew straight out in the gusts and fell slack by turns, under a chill blue sky. The servants laid the breakfast, stirred up the embers and put on another set of logs before Tristen and Uwen sat down, each other’s sole company, and dismissed both Guelenmen and servants.
Today, Tristen supposed, he must begin dealing with his own set of lords, and with Amefel’s peculiar problems. He had never yet visited the garden; he had not seen the library and the places he most valued, and he wished he might sit by the fishpond today, feed the fish and the birds and watch the wind blow, an activity which held no life-and-death decision. It was his reward, his personal and particular reward for duty.
But between the frost on the glass and the banner flying wide, the wind must be blowing with a knife edge today: a bitter wind, a heartless wind. It was a morning for beginnings and rooms swept out and records found and proper men set in charge of things. But it was not a comfortable time to visit old and beloved places.
They were no more than buttering the cold bread when Lusin came breathlessly to say that Liss had turned up at the gates early this morning.
“As her reins are broke, from her treading on them,” Lusin said cheerily, “so the boy said, but otherwise she looks to be sound. She come up to the stables outside the wall. And ye’ll not guess who found ’er.”
“Go down if you wish,” Tristen said, seeing Uwen first start to rise from table in delight, and then think better of it.
“I’d ha’ thought she’d run to Guelessar,” Uwen muttered, and rose with a sketch of a bow. “M’lord, by your leave, will I go, and will ye not go about the halls wi’out me?”
“Go. I’ll not go anywhere alone.” He needed his breakfast, was weary and aching from bruises this morning, and had no need to see Liss to know that she was there and that she was well enough for having run hard and far these last two days.
Nor was he amazed at Liss running to a stable she hardly knew instead of having drifted east toward the Guelen border or the nearest meadow with a village lord’s horse in it. He was happy to watch Uwen go with a boyish gladness in his step and a light in his countenance.
As far as the door. Then Uwen stopped with a sober question.
“Where’s his lordship the viceroy, m’lord?”
“Walking to Guelessar, I would suppose.” He spoke quite seriously, but Uwen laughed delightedly, slapped his leg, and turned and left at a brisk pace.
Tristen finished buttering a slice of bread, and had raspberry jam. But before he had quite finished it, the curtains being open, he saw a flutter of sunlit wings, a noisy, silly congregation on the stone window ledge. He hurried, then, and rose and took the fragments of his breakfast and the end of the loaf for good measure. He opened the window vent by safe daylight, and all his birds, every one arrived, fluttered and crowded one another to reach the bread.
Vain, silly, dear to him… before Lewenbrook, he would have doubted they could possibly find the window, when they had never fed here. But as Liss had found the stables down below the walls, here they were at the right window of all the windows of the Zeide, and he let himself believe he could have his own small pleasures as well as arrange them for others. The sun shone on their backs, touched jewel green on the gray-backed greediest one, who looked at him with a wise, round eye, and then with no hint of shame bullied a violet-tinted gray from the ledge to reach a piece of bread.
“Behave,” he said to them, and yet bent no will to it. They were what they were. So were the lords of Ylesuin. Could he, he thought, in far better spirits this morning, reasonably expect them to be other than they had been… or ask too much of Amefin districts with ancient rivalries?
The little violet-breasted one was back, and found his breakfast, fighting among the others. The difficulty was the pane and the ledge. It let only one or two at a time come at the bread, and much of the bread fell off during the struggles in the flapping of wings.
Was that, too, not like the great lords?
The servants arrived to take away the breakfast; and Uwen came back, breathless and sober, a commotion striding in with straw on his boots and, oddly, a purse and a writing case in his hand.
“She come back safe, m’lord, which ain’t all by half. She come wi’ a fine purse of gold an’ a writin’ case which she had from his lordship, besides she found master Haman, too, who brought her up the hill! His lordship had turned him an’ his boys out to the lower stables, an’ when Liss come trottin’ in wi’ her fancy gear and a purse o’ gold an’ a writin’ case, Haman… bein’ an honest man an’ a quick ’un… brought ’er right up to the stable-court an’ told the guards when we waked we should ha’ word of it. On your advice I said he should come back to his old place an’ I told the Guard stablemaster take all the Guard remounts down the hill to the outside stables. They was so crowded last night they had Guard horses standin’ in the pigsty, to the shame of it, an’ all lookin’ like the sty itself. Meanwhile Haman’s gone to fetch his boys an’ there’ll be an accountin’ o’ that in short order. —But here’s what Liss’ brought wi’ her, besides master Haman, and I’ll guess his lordship ain’t pleased.”
The purse Uwen gave him felt as heavy as the one Idrys had given him when he set out to Amefel, and he judged it a reasonable sum for the lord of a province to carry by the only standard he had, so perhaps he should not assume theft… but in a man found with a bag of women’s jewelry the matter was certainly suspect. The writing case was a cylinder of leather with a cap that held a small container of ink and three clipped and rumpled goose quills, but of greater interest, it held a rolled document, and while Uwen talked on excitedly about master Haman and the stableboys and about Liss having come to the other horses in spite of being a Guelen horse, he unrolled it to see what it was.