And this boy… this all-elbows, tousle-haired boy… this self-appointed warden of Cefwyn's other son… he came to her to know what she was, and found himself too abashed to look her in the eye.

"Were you always with Emuin?" she asked, a more answerable question.

"No," Paisi said. " 'Is Grace sent me to 'im."

"And do you like Emuin?"

Paisi blushed and looked abashed. "May be."

"And how do you regard Tristen?"

"It ain't for me to say about 'Is Grace," Paisi said in a breath. " 'E just is, is all."

"Yet you do like him."

"Aye," Paisi admitted, with all his soul in that answer.

"And Lady Tarien?"

Silence was that answer.

"Do you love the Aswydds?" Ninévrisë asked. "Or not?"

A shake of Paisi's head, a downward look, and a half glance. "Lady Tarien ain't as bad."

"And her son?"

That drew a look up, so direct and so open it held nothing back.

" 'E's a babby, is all."

"No," she said, "not all. Never all."

"Then what ' eis… 'e ain't, yet."

"All the same, he has a friend," she said in the deep silence, for that was how she judged Paisi. "He has one friend; and that friend is a wizard, or will be. And when my son sees the light… will you love him, too?"

Paisi's eyes darted hither and thither, as if he sought to see some answer just past her; but when he looked at her, and again she could see all the way to the depth of him. "I ain't sighted," Paisi said. "I don't know, lady."

"Yet will you wish him harm?" She asked for half, since she could not immediately have the whole. And seeing every certainty of her own life overturned and changed, she fought for her son's certainties. "Or do you wish him well?"

"I ain't ever wishin' anybody harm," Paisi said with a fierce shake of his head. "Master Emuin says a fool'd wish harm to anybody, on account of it's apt to fly back in a body's face an' do gods know what, so, far as I can wish, I wish your babby's happy."

"So do I," Ninévrisë said, and the bands about her heart seemed to loose. This boy, something said to her, this boyis worth winning. "I wish peace, and good, and all such things."

Most of all she wished Cefwyn might see both his sons, and might come alive out of the war. She wished that more than she wished herself to rule; but for Elwynor itself she never gave up her wishes to see it become again what it had been.

She had lost confidence herself… had lost it the morning Tristen left, and did not know where to find it again in Henas'amef. She was out of place here, and regretted with all her heart that she had not ridden with Tristen, but she felt the presence of life within her and knew what dire thing their enemy had tried to do with Tarien's babe. She would not chance that for her own son, Cefwyn's son, the heir of two kingdoms.

"Do you think Lady Tarien will see me?" she asked.

"I don't know she won't," Paisi said.

What Emuin thought of it was another matter: caution flowed from that quarter, for down in the depths, not so far away, was a tightly warded fear, one so closely bound to Tarien it gave Emuin constant worry.

But all the same she gathered the boy by the arm and went to the door and out, where she swept up half her Amefin bodyguard and walked up the stairs to the hall above.

There was a guard of state at Tarien's door, too, and now Tarien Aswydd knew she had a visitor, and met that notion warily. They were not friends. They had never been. But she came with Paisi, and Paisi knew the old woman who stayed with Tarien, knew her as if she were kin of his, as for all Ninévrisë knew the old woman might be.

Only now she and Emuin and the elderly earl whom Tristen had left in charge of the town were the only authority; and she used hers to pass the doors of that apartment.

The place smelled of baby, and the gray space there was close with protections and wards that tingled along her skin and over Paisi's. She could see them for a moment, a flare of blue in the foyer, and at the sunlit window beyond, and about the door that let them in.

They were not against her, but against any wizard who came here; against anyone who might wish to invade this small fortified and enchanted space. And at the very heart of it sat Tarien, tucked up with quilts in a chair by the fire, and in her arms her baby, and her attention was all for the child, nothing for her visitor.

So Tarien defended herself, and wove her little spells around and around her, like a lady spider in her den.

Ninévrisë found herself not even angry, the spells were so small and so many and so desperate… made of fear, every one.

"Good day," she said, "Lady Tarien."

Tarien did not look up, only hugged her child against her, her prize out of all that had happened. Tarien knew who visited her, and inasmuch as Tarien was aware of anything but her own child, knew there was another son, the son of two birthrights, when her son had no claim or right of even one.

They had no need to speak. She had no need to have come here, except to enter the center of Tarien's attention instead of wandering its peripheries. She had nothing to gain: it was Tarien's child who entered the world a beggar and hers who owned it all.

She felt an unexpected compassion for the two of them. And perhaps Tarien knew it, for she did look up, on the sudden and with an angry countenance.

"I offer you no spite," Ninévrisë said. "No threat to your son. May I stay?"

Tarien turned her face away, but without the anger, only seeking escape.

"Then I shan't," Ninévrisë said. "But may I see him?"

Tarien unfolded the cloth about the baby's face and shoulders; and it was a tiny, wizened face like any newborn, harmless to see him, but oh, such possibility of calamity, or of fellowship for her son.

She let go a sigh, and would have offered her finger to the baby's tiny fist, but Tarien turned him away and hugged him close.

Cefwyn's son. Elfwyn, he was named, like the last High King, and half brother to her own babe, when he was born.

She might summon her guards, exert her power, seize the baby, bring him into her own care, for good or for ill, and Tarien's history made her think that might be a wiser course… wiser for them all, Tarien's welfare discounted.

But her father had dinned into her the principles of wizardry, if not the practice of it, that action brought action, that an element out of Place strove until it found that Place. Striving was not what she wished from this child, only peace, and in peace she was willing to leave him, with only a parting word to his mother.

"He has one hope besides his mother's love," Ninévrisë said with all deliberation, "and that will be his father's grace."

"Cefwyn will die in Elwynor," Tarien said fiercely. "Lord Tristenwill be my son's protector. They hail Tristen High King. High King! And he favors my son."

She had not intended to be nettled by the lady, or to take omens from anything the lady said or threatened; but that claim struck too near the mark, far too near.

Paisi quietly tugged at her sleeve. "Master Emuin'll have me hide for bringin' ye here. Come, lady. Come away."

"The lady deceives herself," Ninévrisë said, both in anger and in utter, steadfast conviction, and it occurred to her to say more than that, that Cefwyn would come alive out of the war, and that Tristen would keep his word, and that nothing the Aswydds had ever done had helped them: all this generation of Aswydds had done brought one long tumble of fortunes toward Tarien's solitude and imprisonment.