Fortress of Eagles

“I’ll have the lord of Murandys!” he shouted to the hall in general, waking echoes. “And his damned petition! And Ryssand! Find him!”

Men ran. He stood on the steps, and Idrys arrived, saw the tenor of things and asked no questions of him, nor did a thing but stand to the side.

And in not many moments came the tread of Murandys and a ducal entourage from the east end of the hall, servants scattering like mice along their route, finding niches that took them aside from the course of confrontation.

Murandys had the petition, a parchment trailing ribbons. He had Brugan beside him.

“Your Majesty,” Murandys began, proffering the document. “Herein—”

Cefwyn struck it from Prichwarrin’s hand. It rattled some distance, and Prichwarrin stared at him in shock.

“Your Majesty surely is misled,” Prichwarrin said, tucking his hand against him. His face was white… he was not a young man. “This petition for the welfare of the realm and the Holy Quinalt…”

“… is a sham. And a treasonous sham to boot.”

“Never so, Your Majesty.”

“You press me much too far, Murandys. Have a care to your neck. A lord is not immune.”

“These things must be settled before the wedding. They are essential—”

“No. They are not. The pigs may enjoy your petition, and beware lest I send you to feed it to them.”

“Your Majesty ismisled,” Brugan said, looming over most of the guards in attendance, and full of confidence. “And if there’s misleading, my sister witnessed it. Midnight visitations. Her Grace calling out at night after the lord of Ynefel… the…”

“Liar,” Cevulirn said. And death—someone’s death—became inevitable.

Please the gods, Cefwyn thought, realizing to his dismay a fool, twice Cevulirn’s size and strength and half his age, had maneuvered himself into a direct challenge.

Brugan gri

The Elwynim marriage, the entire southern alliance stood in jeopardy. Cevulirn hadno heir.

“Your Majesty can sign the petition,” Murandys said, whey-faced, “and things might be hushed, for the good of the realm.”

A hiss of steel accompanied that into silence. Cevulirnhad drawn, against all law and custom, under the king’s roof. Brugan backed, drew, and Idrys came away from his posture near the wall, hand near his sword. Cefwyn inhaled deeply and lifted a hand, forbidding Idrys, and his guards, and the duke and his guards, as Cevulirn stepped down from the last step.

“Brother,” Efanor said faintly.

“Hush,” he said.

There was a tentative posturing on Brugan’s side, an attempt to draw Cevulirn after him. Cevulirn grounded his sword against his off-hand boot, and waited, an older man not attempting the young man’s game.

Brugan shouted and rushed with a sweep of his blade.

Blade grated off blade, Brugan went past toward the very steps and guards flung themselves in his path, an iron and determined wall. Cefwyn seized a sword from the nearest, and settled it in his own grip as Brugan reestimated the lord of the Ivanim, a slow circling, this time, a slower advance attended by the rattle and thump of other guards ru

“Stop this!” Prichwarrin cried. “Your Majesty!”

“Bid them stop, Prichwarrin! You incited this! Youstop them!”

“Ivanor!” was Prichwarrin’s next appeal, but Cevulirn paid him no heed, and Brugan, from a crouching, cautious stalking, sprang with a wild sweep of his blade.

A second time blades rang and grated past one another, and Cevulirn was not in the path.

Brugan spun around, straight into Cevulirn’s edge. Blood fountained, followed the weapon in its sweep, and described a delicate spatter on a carved white column across the hall. Brugan went down like the ox he resembled, and Cefwyn observed it in a sense of satisfaction unrelated to the catastrophe the act represented.

“Ivanor has drawn weapons in the king’s presence!” Prichwarrin cried. “Arrest him!”

Cefwyn raised the sword as the first of Prichwarrin’s guards imprudently moved. The men stopped.

“The king,” Cefwyn said in measured tones, “may forgive the lord of Ivanor. Any man else that draws I will cut down like a dog.”

“Your Majesty!”

“I weary of you, Murandys. I have made one duchess over a province. I may make another.”

“This is the son of a loyal baron, murdered in your presence, his heir, his sole son!”

“A loyal baron!” He pointed at the discarded parchment with his borrowed sword. “Gather that up!” he said, and one of his guards complied. “Every man who signed that is party to this, and will be questioned. Any man who impugns the honor of myself or my household or Her Grace or her household will be accounted a traitor. You have bedeviled me, you have insinuated, insulted, inveigled, and imposed on my goodwill too long! I am not my father, sir. I am notmy father, and you have been fatally mistaken to think so!”

He had the satisfaction of seeing stark fear seep through the self-importance of Lord Murandys, before the cold reckoning crept into him that while he was rid of Ryssand’s heir, he had declared a war on the northern barons, and could not continue it, not now.

Men gathered up Brugan and bore him away down the hall, a trail of blood which Prichwarrin was obliged to follow. Servants had not yet stirred forth.

Cefwyn ventured a look at Cevulirn, who had calmly cleared the blood from his blade and stood, despite the spatter, composed and awaiting some word from him… as something had now to be done between Ryssand and Ivanor, and the king had to mediate it. Idrys stood silent, giving away nothing of what he thought, but he was not frowning. Efanor stood near him, pale and shaken, but having his dagger in his hand—Marhanen at last.

Cefwyn gave the sword back to its owner.

“Ivanor,” he said then to Cevulirn, and indicated the way up the stairs. At the top, where the stairs went up to Ninévrisë’s apartment, he cast a glance up, wishing he could go in person, lay eyes on her, hold her and assure her.

As it was he might send a page, and a brief message:

The accusation was raised in my presence, answered by His Grace of Ivanor, and will be bitterly repented by Ryssand. Dismiss Artisane at your pleasure. I no longer suffer fools, nor should my bride suffer them any longer.

But it was not all a victory. Ryssand would take this exceedingly hard, and become not less, but more set on challenges, very likely directly so, if Ryssand could find men who would face Cevulirn. And a man might take on one challenge, but not challenge after challenge, all hired by Ryssand’s gold… if they were at all willing to contest on the field, and not in some dark stairway. He put nothing past Ryssand.

And before he had quite reached the crest of the stairs he knew he had to protect his southern alliance against just such an attempt, and he had to send away one more of his friends, to save all the rest. Snowy evening that it was begi

CHAPTER 6

Snow came down in this sinking of the persistent wind just enough to powder the roofs of the Zeide. An iron-hued canopy of cloud dulled the late-afternoon light so the white stones looked gray and the gray steps turned to pewter. And there had been no word, the Guard scouring the town, of the missing documents. No one had seen the archivist, and the Guard had blocked the gates from the start of the fighting until midday of that first day; but after that, they had opened, first when master Haman came in bringing Liss and after that to known individuals, until with the discovery of missing documents and murder, the order came to shut them. Anwyll reported some stablelads and pigkeepers had come and gone, various of the Guard, and their stablehands, the quartermaster and his staff, a freeholder or two, and woodcutters, charcoalers, and the considerable number of chief men over orchards and outlying establishments of all sorts belonging to the ducal lands and to various of the town-dwelling lords, besides a miller with a load of flour and a ta