Give me the soil of my land underfoot, and let my husband see he’s married no fool. Meanwhile I smile on his mistress and let the vixens in my hall wonder for a season: they see my husband’s foreign wife, but not yet my father’s daughter.

My father, sealed in stone in Althalen’s ruined walls, my father, who wards the seat of kings from strayed Amefin sheep and attends shepherds in their wanderings… father who saved me from marriages to cowards and to his dying hour helped me to the husband I have. Wise father, brave father, see me sit and stitch so patiently, making wishes with every thread. Luriel has until spring to win my friendship: I will allow her that fair trial.

Father, who had the Sihhë blood and passed it down to me, bind wishes in the threads that make meadow flowers in this cold white day. Bespell me the bright blue of the Lines you keep, the palace you ward, all Lines and light. I do not forget. How could I forget?

Father, Uleman, Regent for all these years, I love him. I do love. I forgive him all the past, all his grandfather’s works and all his father’s: I love, and forgiving is natural for one who loves. I make him these silly flowers, I stitch the meadows of the spring when we will go to war, he and I, and when I pray the people believe in me. I stitch the blue Lines for a border, your palace of light, dear Father.

They give me this silly, sotted priest, Father, because the Quinalt fears my skirts, have you heard this foolishness, where you lie? Or has a rumor of it gotten to you? You said I had the Gift, in small part. If I have it, in small part, however, small, I sew my wishes into this linen cloth, smiling at my husband’s mistress, and thinking we must be allies, we two, against the folly abundant in this room.

I sew wishes for an early spring. And for your easy rest, and for the rest of the dead at Ilefínian, for there will be many, many dead. Give Tasmôrden no peace and the faithful dead at least the hope of rescue.

I sew wishes that Tristen be well, my husband’s best ally, and the one he dares not regard. He would cross the river and my husband forbids it, all for Murandys, and Ryssand, who threaten him: when I am Regent in Elwynor, I will remember all of this against them.

The sun passed the edge of the glass, just, and light grew less intense.

“I don’t like this green,” said Bonden-on-Wyk. “I think a brighter shade.”

“Too bright,” said Panys’ daughter, who was a creature of pale shades about her dress, always faded.

“Not too bright,” said Luriel. “Add a darker for contrast. That other green. There’s a match. —What do you think, Your Grace?”

The girl who had worn vixen colors to reconcile with the king asked her opinion.

“Oh, I think you’re quite right,” Ninévrisë said, willing to be an ally. Give her a run at the leash, and see where she went, Ninévrisë thought, and consciously smiled. “I approve.”

“Well, well,” said Bonden-on-Wyk, peering at the combination of greens. “Who’d have thought those two would go together? ”

BOOK TWO

Chapter 1

Two lords of Ylesuin rode out under a sky filled with scattered clouds, a heaven pasturing fat, misdirected sheep. It portended fair if fickle weather as they went out the gates of Henas’amef, two lords with a mingled guard of Ivanim and Guelenfolk… a mixed guard, and a startled flock of pigeons, winging out and out toward the still-sleepy west.

Hold court, Emuin had said, and that Tristen had done, if hastily. Take account, Emuin had said, and that accounting, given Cevulirn’s brief but essential personal presence, had seemed the most pressing thing.

Other matters were already attended: the garrison flag flew atop the hill they had left, no longer under the same captain, but firmly in the hand of Uwen Lewen’s-son, who had some distress at being left behind this morning, but there he was.

“I ain’t troubled for you, m’lord,” Uwen had said last night, “as ye manages things right well when they come to ye, but ye do have this way o’ findin’ the trouble in a place. An’ pokin’ about the north, lad—are ye sure we’re ready for’t?”

Tristen had laughed, as Uwen could make him laugh even considering such a dire possibility. But he thought they were indeed ready. It was the river he proposed to visit, and Captain Anwyll, and his intention was not to provoke Tasmôrden.

“I fear worse if we leave Bryn to its own devices even another day,“ he had said to Uwen this morning, just at the top of the hill, when they were setting out, ”and you’ve Drumman, and Azant to advise you, so you should do very well even if the king’s officers come visiting. Never fear.”

“It’s the Elwynim come visitin’ concerns me,” Uwen said. And standing very near him, face-to-face before he set his foot in the stirrup: “Ye take care, lad. Ye take great care.”

“We will,” Tristen had assured him, and they had parted with an embrace… no man else would he have trusted so much, not with the chance that the flight of the officers to Guelessar might rouse some inquiry. The better men of the Guelen Guard had come into line once Uwen had walked in with fire in his eye and set the garrison barracks in order, and indeed, some rode with him now. Uwen would shake the Guelen Guard until order fell out: he might have evaded command all this time, but he had waded into the matter with a clear notion of what he expected, as he said, from otherwise good soldiers, and he had the loyalty of the remaining sergeants: that was of great importance.

Accordingly Tristen had far less worry leaving the town than when the former captain had commanded all the armed might in his capital, and them a foreign, hated presence. He had no doubt his letter would reach Idrys, either, in the good sergeant’s hands… and the Lord Commander, once warned, was completely capable of dealing with the Guelen captain.

So he and Cevulirn, Amefel, and Ivanor, rode out together to see the riverside, taking their course around to the north of the town and its hill.

There they turned off on the snowy, lesser-used road that wended through low hills toward the north and its villages. The road they took now was the same that led to Elwynor, the same that, once across the river by the bridge Anwyll guarded, led on to Ilefínian.

Theirs was not the only party going out from Henas’amef today. He had sent Crissand to Levey and to his other villages, and southward, as his right hand… for the pieces and parts of a policy had begun to fall into place, and messengers of various sort were carrying word of decisions taken. Before Cevulirn had come in, he had feared he might have no choice but to call up men a second time in a year and fling them against a better-armed, trained enemy to support the Marhanen king. The Amefin had faced yet one more unwanted war, if not on their own soil, then just across the river, with their backs to the water, in no enviable position and without the strength to carry an attack on foot to any great distance at all. They would become the anvil to Cefwyn’s hammer from the northeast.

But with Cevulirn’s promise of defense, came the hope that southern villages like Levey might keep their sons and plant their fields and expect to enjoy the harvest of them. Now they had a chance to bring troops to bear on the riverside, make firm that defense, and set a camp this spring on Tasmôrden’s side of the river. For with the fast-moving light horse Cevulirn could supply, and with other lords coming in from the south, they would become a force that could strike hard and deep from such a camp and, with support from behind and bridges in their control, never be pinned with their backs against the river.