"That he loves us. He loves us so much, so kindly… no one could deserve it."

"We can contest for deserts," he said, "and you would win." He was grateful, desperately so, to find hope of affection and forgiveness in this blank paper, and in her glance. "If anyone can care for Tarien's baby, do you think, it would be Tristen. He won't harm it. It's not in him to harm it. But he won't let it do harm, either."

She gave a desperate small laugh. "Tristen? Gods, to care for a baby? So much comes through. I don't know how." She placed a hand over the paper and inhaled deeply, several times. "It's as if I was there! Emuin's upset with you."

"Gods, upset. Far too small a word."

"And Tristen's confused."

"Tristen's always confused." His spirits soared in this exchange of breathless probabilities, almost as if she could see through a window into Amefel, one shut to him: but he saw it through her eyes, almost now as if he could see it, and could say that it was true. What she saw gave her courage, and she lent it to him. The relief was so great he could all but laugh. "Tell me all you know."

"There's a boy," Ninévrisë said. "Emuin's found a boy to help him. I don't understand his name. But there's some sort of boy."

"I could be jealous," Cefwyn said fervently, who had been the boy in Emuin's care, in days of climbing trees and skinning knees. "But I'm glad for Emuin, and the boy."

"Uwen's well. So are all the others. Captain Anwyll's off at the river and the weather's been wretched, the same as here. I think… I think Tristen's doing very well, except for Orien Aswydd and Tarien."

"That's a large exception." The flood of information after Tristen's lamentably terse letters both cheered him like the voice of a friend and then gave him pause, as if perhaps Ninévrisë added to her guesses to please him. "Does he true say all that?—Of course he does. How could you make all that up?"

Ninévrisë pressed the sheet to her heart. "I hearhim say it, or I don't hear, but it's like a dream, and I'm sure what he meant. He's done so much… the changes, and building the walls and the fortresses up, and he's built up at Althalen…"

It should be a lance of ice to the heart… the Marhanens had risen to power at Althalen's fall: the condition of his dynasty depended on Althalen's ruin.

But he heard it only half-alarmed, for Tristen did it, and he refused to think evil of his friend—least of all for the consolation he had given Ninévrisë. "I don't think the Quinalt will like that," he said, "but damn them."

"He had to have it for the people, for all the people running from Tasmôrden." Her voice was unlike her, trembling. "And he's saved some of them. He's made them welcome in his lands. He's settled protection all up and down the river, despite the snow. And the lords have come to him, Aeself, and others: a cousin of mine is alive!"

"He's done well," Cefwyn said. "He's done very well. But no matter how Tasmôrden provokes him, he mustn't let those folk start fighting on his land. He mustn't attack from there." And on a sudden thought and a soaring hope: "Can you use that paper and talk to him?"

She shook her head, dashing the hope before it reached any height at all. "No. I can't. It doesn't work that way. He cast a spell on the paper. I couldn't do it."

"But don't lose it," he said. The hope, however uninformed, modified itself to the thought that the letter might be bespelled to go on spilling things to them as they happened. He longed to touch the paper himself, wondering whether a man as deaf to magic as the nearest ox could possibly gain some sense of Tristen's presence from it. He knew acutely what he had lost when he had had to send Tristen away: that sense of things possible and magical that had lent him courage to fight all his battles, that sense of a friend at his back that no one but Tristen had ever given him.

And now that steady, reassuring presence came through his lady's voice, and gave him an absurd confidence that they were not alone, no matter how things seemed to close around them.

But he forbore to touch it, in case the enchantment might die in his hands, and thrive only in Ninévrisë's.

"Thank you," he said. And added, "I love you," as he said often: but now he felt constrained to say it in apology for irrevocable and damaging acts. "I love you for your forbearance. I love you a hundred times more now than at the first. And if you still love me through all this, I'll be so far in your debt a hundred years won't see me clear. Once and for all, I had no idea, when I exiled the Aswydds. Shemay have known. But I didn't."

"Why Tarien?" was the sole unkind question, and he could only shrug and force himself to look straight into her eyes.

"I ask myself that question, I assure you. I'll ask it so long as I live. And I can't answer it."

"I answer it. Sorcery led you. You couldn't be so foolish."

"I wish that were so," he said, and bowed his head. "I have been that foolish, and was that foolish, and generally I needed no great help at it."

She embraced him where he knelt, leaned her head against his, all the soft perfume of her hair, and the random hard edge of pearls wound into her braids.

"The news of this will get out," she said, her hand against his cheek. "You know you have to deny this son or acknowledge him in some fashion."

"Let Emuin prove what he is first. Then I'll know what to do."

"Word might already have gotten out. If the men who were guilty of the raid on the nunnery didn't know, the nuns might have. She's near her time. They must have seen. And if they missed it, at least everyone in Amefel must know by now, and there might be spies: in everything else we think there might be spies. Wouldn't they report this back to Guelessar?"

The Aswydds were not a presence one could slip unknown into the town, or keep close in a house where every servant knew them. It was a surety that someone would talk. "It's too much to hope Ryssand doesn't learn it within the week, and will bring it into the open at the worst moment."

"If," she said slowly, "he doesn't already know. She is Cuthan's cousin. Might that not be the arrow they're still holding in reserve? Might Tasmôrdenknow and be conspiring with Cuthan on behalf of that child, price for price, for the next step in their plan?" Her fingers sought his on the arm of the chair. "Peace with Tasmôrden. Peacewith him. I can't grant this. It's a barbed hook. Everyone of sense has to know it. It's not even to Ylesuin's advantage, let alone yours."

All she said was true, the depth of his betrayal of her had filled his heart and warped his thinking, and he grasped at her logic as a drowning man to a life rope.

"When a battle begins," she continued, "the archers go first, don't they?"

"So as not to hit their own men, yes, commonly they go first." He knew it was not archers she meant, but he followed her where she led, and answered honestly and soberly, looking into gray eyes that hinted, to his mind, of violets.

"I think," she said, "I think we are seeing the archers of this spring."

"Precursors to the attack?"

"I think sorcery's not done with us. Lewenbrook was the beginning of it. After the archers, what would you look for?"

"The flying attacks. The cavalry."

"And the battle line behind that. Well screened, not evident."