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Servants passed, with massive copper buckets that foretold a bathtub being filled with hot water.
Clean, hot water. If dead men had been end to end of the floor, Tristen thought, he would have longed for that bath, and he abandoned his last reluctance about the place.
“I want you, and our men, with me,” he said to Uwen as they walked through the i
“The captain’s had the town watch shut down the taverns,” Uwen said, “so the captain says. Can’t any man roam the streets carrying his pot of drink with him, and Lord Cuthan’s got his household men standin’ watch by the tavern, gods save us, so’s no crowd gets to barrels of it. Men can be great fools when they’re happy.”
“And are they happy?” He paused. He was astonished, in the light of the lord viceroy’s actions and all else that had gone amiss.
“Oh, indeed they are, m’lord. Folk as feared the town might lie under siege all winter, they’re right happy. They don’t care if ye’re a wizard or ye ain’t. By them, ye ain’t Guelen, ye ain’t any viceroy, and Sihhë ain’t any unlucky word hereabouts, either, so to say. Here, if ye call down lightning on the Zeide roof, why, they’ll take no offense by’t. Aye, they’re happy, lad, they’re right happy about a peaceful winter. Ye’ve come home, an’ may ye have a long and a happy stay here, m’lord, wi’ all my heart, dare I wish so?”
A long and a happy stay. And a cheerful, even a bantering and wistful wish from Uwen, who had heard everything in the hall below.
“But may I say, gettin’ far above myself, m’lord, ye was right to chide the earls.”
“Was I?”
Uwen colored to the roots of his hair. “Sayin’ as I’d know,” he said with a downcast look. “But ye done well, m’lord. Only—”
“Only?”
“Ye was right, too, about them sayin’ lord Sihhë. ’At’s trouble. The Quinalt father was standin’ there with his hands in his sleeves and lookin’ to have swallowed a bad bite.”
“Idrys says to make a gift to the Quinalt. I think we should for all of the priests, and have them happy.”
“If ye went yoursel’ an’ made it, they’d be happiest of all.”
“We have the gold.”
“Aye, m’lord.” Uwen laughed. “Ye have the whole damn treasury… which ye should look into and take account of, at least I would, seein’ the lord viceroy was packin’ jewels which might have been her ladyship’s.”
“Orien’s?” He had by no means imagined.
“Her ladyship bein’ duchess of Amefel, I don’t know, but she wore some right fine green ’uns when she were lady here. An’ I don’t know the color of what the viceroy was packing.”
“Twice, then, tonight, Orien.”
Uwen’s face had gone quite sober. “I’d say so, m’lord, an’ right cautious I’d be wi’ anything that lady owned.”
Tristen passed a glance around them, the draperies, the ornate doors, the penchant for dragons.
“So I am,” he said.
They walked back to the entry, and there he stopped and gazed at his domain: heavy chairs, massive tables, tapestries wrought in silk, fanciful globes worked in gold and silver. There were tables covered entirely in gold leaf, and a dining table the legs of which were strange, hostile beasts. With the servants’ best efforts he still found the dimly lighted room, with its dark green, gold-tasseled draperies over the windows, stiflingly oppressive, as if air had not moved here, and could not move again.
He walked across the room, surveyed the green fabric that he associated with Heryn and Orien and the Aswydds—rightly associated: it was the Aswydd heraldry. He gave it a tug to draw the drapery back. It slid freely and unexpectedly on its rods, showing diamond-paned glass, and night, and dark—
Stark terror, beyond the window, a shattering of light and dark on glass.
Reflections. Mere reflections. His heart had leapt. And settled.
But it had been real, once. On a certain night this summer he had surprised Lady Orien and her sister in sorcery at the very table as that now in the corner of his eye, with the dragon candlesticks alight, the window vents open and unwarded before her, her sister Tarien, and a small cluster of her ladies. In his imagining at any moment he might hear the rustle of Lady Orien’s skirts, smell her heavy perfume.
For an instant he longed to flee this room at least until daylight.
But if he could not master this room, and its shadows, himself being forewarned and wary and far more potent than the earl’s thin Aswydd blood, then how could he ever master the Zeide? The threat was negligible, if he met it, dealt with it, banished it.
And what would Emuin say now of this night’s doing? Not praise for his foresight, he much feared. He would not compound his discreditable actions by hieing himself and his guards to a dusty, unused bedchamber, all for fear of Aswydd curses, he, who was Mauryl Gestaurien’s heir.
“M’lord?” Uwen had come up close to him. “M’lord?”
The window reflected a dark man and an older, worried one, silver-haired, behind him.
Then by a trick of the eyes he was looking out into dark, and night.
Shadows rushed against the window, a solid wall of black. A second trial of him.
He lifted a hand, startled, and a second time saw only the window again, the ordinary night.
Lady Orien had invited shadows into this room repeatedly. She had treated with them, opened this window, compromised the Lines on the earth that Masons had made when they declared the foundations of the Zeide; and it was a dangerous breach to have made. She had sought power to come to herself… but being bound inside the Zeide, had either acted in folly or overweening pride. This window had become a gateway to Orien’s ambition, her hate, her anger, going out… and that had become worse, a highroad to far older spirits entering. Hasufin Heltainhad almost entered here. That ancient, dispelled spirit had needed only a tiny breach to begin its entry, but fortunately for everyone, it had needed a far, far greater one in order to enter any place as warded as the Zeide had been, and as far from Hasufin’s own center of power. Hasufin or whatever passed for Hasufin in this place had not quite succeeded in breaking the wards.
At Ynefel… it had done so. And Ynefel, warded by the most potent wizard alive, stood in ruins. Dared anyone think a tiny crack should be disregarded?
The one beneath the horn-paned window… had thatbeen the entry?
Or had his own young curiosity breached Ynefel’s wards?
He touched the side of the window, and drew his finger from that side across the sill, all the way across to the other wall. He touched the metal frame of the little side pane that opened, and ran his fingers across the latch. He repeated the action. Three times, Emuin had said. Once was an accident, twice was divisible, three was neither accident nor divisible. Three was a maze spirits could not bend themselves through with any ease at all.
The reflection showed a dark man and a silver-headed one. Uwen watched his actions, saying not a thing.
“I treasure you above all my household,” he said to Uwen’s reflection. “I wish you well, Uwen, and I wish you very well. I wish you well.”
Three times he said it, and if, as Emuin said, he had an unbreakable hold on magic, he attempted it as consciously as anything he had done in the hall tonight. Uwen was silent a moment. And shadows drifted, no longer potent, on the other side of the glass, fading from the edges of the day.
“I’m glad of that, m’lord,” Uwen said finally.
The drapery smelled of incense, unpleasantly so.
“Red,” Tristen said, and gathered up a fistful of the green velvet, pulled at it, looked up, where the rod supported it. It would assuredly fall if he pulled it, but it would endanger the wrought panes of the window and the dragon-held tables on either side. No matter his distaste for the place, it was the wealth of Amefel, which he had sworn to increase, and tend, and not to cause harm to it.