For the Crown itself could not, dared not defend Benwyn too zealously. She knew how delicate a balance that was.

“Oh, dear,” said Brusanne, and began that urgent search of her skirts that told of a lost needle. Others began to search, too, about her, through the mountains of fabric around her, for the needles that sewed the pearls were fine and easily lost, and tended to turn up in the folds of the work, to prick the wearer when she next tried the garment on.

“Here it is,” said Margolis, and returned it to the daughter of Panys, who thrust it through the sleeve above her wrist.

“There,” said Brusanne. “I’ll not stab my brother’s bride. I’m sure it’s bad luck.”

“It’s bad luck to say bad luck,” said Bonden-on-Wyk.

“There,” said Luriel, vexed. “Will you not refrain from saying it twice, then?”

BOOK THREE

Chapter 1

Sergeant Gedd was back from Guelessar, a fortnight past all expectation and after they had all but given him up for lost. “And glad to be here, m’lord,” Gedd said fervently, reporting to Tristen in the privacy of his apartments. Gedd had surely come straight up from the stables, stopping only to wash the dust from face and hands, for the fair hair about his face was wet, his beard, ordinarily carefully trimmed, had stubble about the sides, and his clothes were spattered with two colors of mud different than any in the stable yard.

In such guise, too, of dirt and disrepute, Gedd handed him a precious and very belated letter. Stripped of coverings of dirty cloth, it emerged cleanly, resplendent with red ribbon and the royal seal. “Forgive me that I’m so late. Word directly from the Lord Commander, too, m’lord, that I have in memory.”

“Tell it to me,” Tristen said. He laid the letter on the desk before him, as Uwen stood near his chair, silent as the brazen dragons. “What happened?”

“Respects first, m’lord, from the Lord Commander, and then this, which is weeks late: that the guardsmen who left the Amefin garrison by your leave have gone to the Quinalt for protection and so has the patriarch of Amefel. The Lord Commander says to tell Your Grace kindly give him no more such gifts. His words, my lord, as he said them, forgive me.”

He could all but hear Idrys say it, and he was glad it was no sharper barb. He knew he deserved one.

But weeks late. He had no more recent news and had feared to send.

“And from His Majesty,” Gedd said, “who says to tell Your Grace that the patriarch of Amefel put the Holy Father in a difficult position, and that there’s trouble in the Quinaltine. Those were His Majesty’s words. Trouble in the Quinaltine. He said tell Your Grace that His Reverence has friends in Ryssand.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes, my lord. He gave me the letter with his own hand, and I was straight off and away.”

“But late.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why?” Uwen asked, from the side and behind, and Gedd cast an anxious look in his direction.

“I had someone on my trail. I took up to the hills. But… Your Grace might want to hear… talk started about the tavern…”

“Tell me everything,” Tristen said. “Don’t hurry.”

Gedd drew a breath. He was a strong man and a good soldier: it was from exhaustion, surely, that his hand shook as he raked back the damp hair. “Priests are going about the town preaching, talking against wizards and Bryaltines and generally against the war, that’s one thing. There’s talk among the people against Amefel and Her Grace as a bad influence on the king, and the war as costing too much, being too dangerous, and bringing honest Guelenmen among wizards and heretics. That’s everywhere.”

It was dire news. And unjust. Cefwyn was good. What he did was good, and they said as unkind things about him as they said about Heryn Aswydd.

“Everyone says so?” he asked.

“Say that it’s safer to say that than to praise His Majesty,” the sergeant said, “on account of His Majesty’s friends don’t damn you to hell or look at you as would curdle milk. There’s ugliness in the town, and it’s got knives, m’lord.”

“He’s in danger.”

“As I’d say, and as the Lord Commander knows, and I think His Majesty knows. But,” Gedd said, “His Majesty rode against the dark at Lewen field, such as none of the layabouts complaining never had to face, and if a common man can say, m’lord, there’s a king.”

“He is that,” Tristen said, and added, half to convince himself, “and if he knows, then he’ll deal with it.”

“Only so’s he guards ’is back,” Uwen said, “against Ryssand.”

“And you were attacked?” Tristen asked.

“Not as it were attacked,” Gedd said, “only there were men after me that I knew was the Lord Commander’s, and then they weren’t there, and these were, and they weren’t his. And right or wrong I decided a late message was better than no message and went to ground. There’s a nasty mood even to the villages, such as I was glad I wasn’t wearing Amefin colors on the way in. Safer to be a common traveler, out of Llymaryn, says I, as I came into Guelessar: they’re pious down there, left and right, and I know the brogue. And being Guelen,” Gedd added, “I could get through. On the way back, I gave up being Llymarish and in the open and just hid and moved as I could… I let my horse go. Master Haman says he’s not made it here; he might have run for his old pastures, up by Guelemara. And the one the Lord Commander’s men gave me… no telling where he is. I walked.”

“Well ye did,” Uwen said, “by that account.”

“The other news—” Something came to Gedd, on a deep breath. “The other news, which may not be news, now: Murandys’ daughter’s to marry Panys’ son, by the by. She’s come back to court, and she’s betrothed to Rusyn of Panys.”

“Luriel?” He had heard of the lady in his days in Guelessar, and that she had been Cefwyn’s almost-betrothed, and had left to something like exile.

That she had come back to court was surely no good news.

“Come on His Majesty’s invitation,” Gedd went on, “as had to be, of course. Her Grace met her in the face of all the court and took her amongst her women. This isn’t what His Majesty told me, but it’s what I heard in the town, and I heard it in more than one place, so I take it for true. And the Lord Commander isn’t himself daunted, but it was his instruction to wrap the message up in rags and shove it deep in the rocks or heave it down a well if I thought I was followed. And I thought of that. But I thought I could get it through.”

“Well-done in that,” Uwen said, “too. —Ye were careful what ye said, yourself, I wager. Was it in Guelessar ye picked up these followers?”

“Captain, I swear to you, my tavern-going was discreet. Between talking to the Lord Commander immediately as I reached the town and being called to His Majesty the same night, in secret, in all that time I had the Lord Commander’s men close by. I gave out freely that I was a courier, but I said I was from Llymaryn, and hoped I didn’t meet a Llymarishman, which I didn’t. After I had my meeting with His Majesty and left the Guelesfort, I had the Lord Commander’s men in the street, them as I knew were his, while I nabbed my gear and my horse from the tavern where I’d left him. And I had the Lord Commander’s men on the street, too, and out past the gate, where they gave me a horse besides my own that they’d brought. That was how they watched over me, and I took the warning, m’lord, and was watching my back, when one hour they were there and the next was a pair of riders coming up on me. That morning was when I saw a third show up, and I ran hard and sent my horses one way and I went to ground, right then. The rest was walking, mostly at night.”

“And gettin’ the better of the Lord Commander’s men,” Uwen said with a shake of his head. “That ain’t ordinary bandits. And from the town. I’d almost say there’s a man amongst ’em as ain’t on the straight. That’s too damn quick.”