"If I could undo it…"

"There's no undoing it. My father used to say that if and could and wish have no effect outside philosophy. But they do in wizardry, and I won't wish this child harm. I will not!''

He was shaken to the core, confronted by an iron determination, news he was in no wise prepared to have twice in a night, and his lady's unanticipated defense of her rival's child. He had no notion which direction to face, and knew Idrys witnessed his discomfiture— no advice from that quarter, not a word.

"I ask your forgiveness," Cefwyn said. "It's all I can say. It's my fault. And hers."

"But none of the babe's fault. And shewill teach him to desire the throne and to hate me, and perhaps hate you."

He could not deny her fears. They were his.

"There is a remedy," Idrys said, intervening at last, grim master crow, reminding a king with a threatened kingdom what terrible, unspeakable deeds he might command, at the lightest word.

And did Idrys dare bring that darkness into Ninévrisë's hearing? He found himself all but trembling.

"Don't disallow him," Ninévrisë repeated.

It was not hers to command the Lord Commander. It was his, and he drew a long, steadying breath.

"He's all but born," he said, "considering the time it was possible. The very limited time it could have happened." It was not the Privilege of a king to sink his head into his hands and shut the world out of his ears. "He's with Tristen, and Emuin. That's something." Tristen's letter said beand a son. He fell into it unthinking, and then realized he had admitted it.

"And with his mother," Idrys said, "who is a sorceress. That's also something to consider, my lord king."

The Marhanen temper rose up on his next breath, silently railing on fate and wizardry. But his heart refused to lead him where Idrys advised him to go… and he knew whom he had made keeper of his heart, and his gentler nature. He knew what terrible, unanswerable force he would contend with if he attempted the babe's life— and knew that he would himself bring prophecy down on his head.

"Tristen wouldn't countenance it," he said with a sense of relief, and then knew his own bearings, as if he had found the daylight in this night. "And gods help me, Iwon't."

"Both Emuin and the Lord of Amefel are potent barriers to a boy," Idrys said, "but when this seed casts a shade, my lord king of Ylesuin, what shape will it have? And, pray,—" It was one of Idrys' most detestable habits, that pause before his worst remarks: "—what heritage and inheritance will this boy claim?"

Cefwyn bit back an angry request for silence: Idrys' value was precisely that he would say what he thought, whether or not it pleased him; and do what had to be done, at times, whether or not his king had the will to act.

But was Idrys to rule Ylesuin, or was he? And were the decisions to be decisions not to decide, and to rein back Idrys?

And should Idrys say such things to him in Ninévrisë's hearing?

He found he was as shaken by that as by the facts themselves, and discovered in himself a sense that Tristen had found and Ninévrisë had tended, until he did not know who was master of his opinions, or where he had passed beyond Idrys' dark counsel, but he knew he had never made a decision he was surer of. He thought how Emuin, when he entertained notions of being rid of Tristen, had counseled him very simply, and in the face of all the danger Tristen posed him: Win his friendship.

And was that it now?

Win this unintended son? Acknowledge a bastard and create a claimant when the barons' damned haggling over the marriage treaty had left Ninévrisë's son no more heir to the throne of Ylesuin than Tarien's son?

He was mad.

He had gone quite mad, and went to his unresisting lady and took her hand, and looked at her eye to eye, no easy deed.

"I don't know what I can do," he said. "I don't know. I only know Tristen has the situation in his hands. And I know what he won'tdo, and won't countenance, and I know you're right."

"I don't," she said. "I don't know that I'm right. But I know what's not right."

"He'll have his mother," Cefwyn said. "And gods save him, his aunt. But at Amefel now he has Tristen and Emuin, and the Aswydds won't have their way, will they?" He wished Idrys would leave. He longed to gather his bride against his heart and attempt to mend things—to talk about theirson, and make the moment what it ought to be. But no such gesture would mend what now was.

He tried. He extended a hand. Ninévrisë stood with arms tightly folded, protecting her heart, gazing somewhere that was not this room.

"Go," he said to Idrys, trying to signal him that he wanted rapid, silent departure. "I think we know all we need to deal with."

"There is one other letter," Idrys said, ignoring his king, and drew a second folded, sealed missive from his coat.

And what other, more disastrous missive could have arrived, and from whom, and on what damnable misreading of him had Idrys held it back? The anger all but strangled him.

"For Her Grace," Idrys said, "from Lord Tristen."

It was unprecedented that Tristen write to Ninévrisë. But of course—of course, Cefwyn thought, it was a separate consolation from Tristen, and he was a dog to resent it, even with Idrys' abominable timing; even with his own pain and Ninévrisë's. It came, he was sure, out of the devastating kindness Tristen had, so often timed to wring the temper out of him and drive him to distraction. It was, as much as Tristen understood this matter of children and the getting of them—utterly well-meant, and completely upsetting.

Ninévrisë took it, read what seemed only a word or two. Her hand flew to her heart, and, clenched, lifted to her lips.

Then she said to Idrys, "It's nothing. There's nothing here. Please leave us." The last was sudden, anguished, more plea than order, and with only a glance at him to confirm it, Idrys silently bowed and left.

Ninévrisë ebbed into a chair and held the small paper close against her heart, and Cefwyn held his breath, trying with all his might not to pry into what was, until she willed otherwise, her business.

Then Ninévrisë released the paper to her lap, and to his eye there was nothing written on it, nothing at all.

"He's afraid for you," she said in a trembling voice, and a tear traced a path down on a face otherwise tranquil. "And afraid for me, and would defend us both with all his heart. He wishes us both well."

Hecould only be one man.

But he still saw nothing to tell him those things. Or he saw nothing he wanted to see… for he knew Ninévrisë had wizard-gift, a gift kept small and quiet and never wizard-taught, except what she had learned of her father. And if there was something magical written on the blank paper that only wizards could see, then she had just used it.

He forgave. Against the evidence of his sins of the flesh, her good use of the gift she was born with could hardly weigh at all. He was still her debtor: sheat least was true as gold to her promises, all of them.

"Do you readsomething there?" he asked, and dropped to a knee beside her chair, to gaze at a paper as blank as the day it was made, save only Tristen's signature and red wax seal.

"I know his heart. I know what he wishes me to know, as surely as if I read it."

"We can trust him." That was true, no matter what in the world changed, and the remembrance of that warmed his heart to a stronger, steadier beat. "I dotrust him, Nevris. He's scared me at times beyond good sense. And he does, now. What does he say about this?"