"My lord king, this is Brother Meigyn. He asks Your Majesty's protection and a recommendation to the Quinaltine, for his service to Your Majesty."

"And that service?"

"Brother Meigyn has been a clerk of the Quinalt in Ryssand. His position there has become difficult, because of the service he's about to render. If he goes back to Ryssand's court, he's a dead man."

"Give him to Annas. Recommend him to Jormys. What's the tale?"

"Let me dispose of the good brother," Idrys said, and escorted the frightened man to the door, where he gave orders to the page waiting outside. "His Majesty's instruction," Idrys said. "A hot meal, a warm place to sit. Wait for me. I may have more questions."

Then Idrys was back, a black, foreboding presence: master crow with news that did not bode well.

"From Lord Ryssand's court?" Ninévrisë prompted him in a faint voice.

"Just so, my lady. Unhappily, this was my last man in Ryssand's court. Two others had to flee, not without delivering useful information. Another died a suicide, or so the official explanation ran. Meigyn remained to the last. He's given to venial sins, a love of ale and women, far better a Teranthine than a Quinalt avocation, but that's his misfortune. Being my last and best source, he had the good sense to come only when there was something worth his life… and considerable reward."

"He accompanied Corswyndam here?" Cefwyn asked, wondering how close the clerk might have sat to the duke of Ryssand, and whether there would be a storm over this desertion.

"Fled, rather, on foot, when he knew Corswyndam was coming here and with what news. He's an unobtrusive man—stole a mule at Evas-on-Reyn, and managed to get here two hours behind. What he does say seems well worth his risk, my lord king. It's the essence of what Ryssand will say tonight."

The details. The chance to set their course before the battle. Cef -wyn exchanged a look with his brother and his wife.

"Say on, master crow." Cefwyn drew a deep breath and leaned an arm across the back of his chair, waiting. "What does Ryssand think to win?"

CHAPTER 8

The evening was for a state celebration: Luriel's wedding night and all the grand commotion of a noble union, the bride and groom feted in hall, with course after course of food.

It should have been an unbridled festivity, but the undercurrent of matters in the court had Ryssand and Murandys, those traditional allies, doing a dance around each other more delicate than any pa-selle on the floor… the uncle of the bride tending not, as was traditional, to the side of the groom's family, the lord and lady of Panys, but to his old fellow in misdeed, Lord Ryssand.

Consequently the eyes of every experienced courtier in hall were less for Luriel than for Ryssand's daughter Artisane, emerging tonight as a whispered candidate to marry into the royal house. Efanor had loosed that rumor deliberately: far better to be the source than the subject of speculation.

And perhaps Artisane had also let word slip out. Certainly Ryssand had done nothing to restrain her. Her gown outshone the bride's; it all but outglittered the royal regalia, for that matter.

And clearly Luriel did not like the competition on her evening: her stark-set, basilisk stare settled on Artisane at every moment they crossed one another's line of sight.

A wild bedding tonight, Cefwyn said to himself. Luriel's temper was oil on tinder, in that realm… he could say so, who had Proposed to marry the lady himself. Now he asked himself how he could ever have fallen into Luriel's web of angers and passions, piques and rages and most of all how he could ever have thought her continual upheaval the ordinary way of women. Thatwas a basilisk indeed, tonight, stalking the cockatrice.

The lady beside him, in the simple circlet crown of Elwynor, in fine embroidery and a comparative lack of ornament otherwise… this was a woman, and she far outshone the pair of combatants on the floor. So Cefwyn leaned across the difference in their seats— Ryssand's damned stone—to whisper to his consort.

"You're the sun and the moon. They're summer lightning, and a dry night at that."

"And what will you be?" Ninévrisë asked with that wry response he so loved. "Ah! The stormy north wind."

"When Ryssand presents us his little play tonight, by the gods, he'll think so. And they could pile the wealth of the southern kingdoms on that minx and not improve her disposition."

"Which?" Ninévrisë asked, dagger-sharp.

"What, no love for Luriel either?"

"I welcomeArtisane. The two of them will not make common cause, not till pigs make poetry. It should keep the two of them busy and provide entertainment for the rest of us."

They never had loved one another, Artisane and Luriel, contrary to the politics of their houses. Luriel's detestations were legion, her uncle among them, and while the ladies warred with glances across the hall, the uncle and father made solemn converse behind a thick column, and tried to pretend no one saw them.

At a reasonable hour in the wedding-night celebration it was the custom for bride and groom to retire with the maids and ladies and young men trooping after them, bearing lit candles and fistfuls of acorns… the latter of which posed great annoyance to the marriage bed, when they cast them in. He and Ninévrisë had found the last wandering nuisance in the small hours of their wedding night, and flung it ceremoniously in the fire.

So on this evening, young Rusyn of Panys finished a solitary paselle with his bride. And on the very last notes, with a flourish and squall of pipes, the traditional chase was on, the young couple, warned by the pipes, dashing for the door, the young men and married women of the court in close pursuit, snatching candles conveniently in the hands of servants and having brought their own supply of missiles. The couple might be spared the gifts in the bed if they were fleet of foot, but few made it.

Scores of nuts in a marriage bed, open wishes for children cast among ribald comments: a perfectly respectable tradition that roused nothing but laughter. But a man presenting a single acorn to the love of his life on the ballroom floor was a matter for scandal.

No, not a man: a king. And not the love of his life: the ruler of a rival court. And the fruit of that union would be no ordinary child, but would arrive into the world shadowed with political debts and promises he and Ninévrisë between them would have set for all his life to deal with. What a man started in his lifetime, his sons—and his daughters—needs must finish, and in finishing, set the incomplete pattern for their sons and daughters.

A sobering thought as the shrieking festivity departed, the province of the matrons and the young—which left the somber elders to enjoy a round of wine and contemplation… or so it should be, in happier times.

As it was, it left all the lords in position for the confrontation Cefwyn expected, Ryssand lurking about, waiting a summons, trying to obtain one by every means short of walking up and asking.

"Master crow," Cefwyn said.

"My lord king." The shadowy eminence hovering at his back and Ninévrisë's came forward on the dais and leaned down near his ear.

"Is there more news, at this last moment for second thoughts?"

"Nothing more than my king already knows. Shall I summon him?"

"Oh, stay, converse about the weather. Let the scoundrel wonder what we say to one another. Frown and laugh. I'll not help his digestion."