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If he were his grandfather he would have said, “The king’s friend is the king’s friend and whoever slights him will have me for an enemy. Damn the lot of you anyway.”
Tristen’s message, precious as it was, had stated in amazingly few words the overturn of all he had arranged in Amefel. He had feared Tristen might prove such a sparse letter writer. Master Emuin had his tower back. A lord of ancient lineage had suffered exile.
Tristenhad exiled an Amefin earl. The lamb had assaulted the lion.
And let the rest of them, from Henas’amef to Lanfarnesse, beware their sedition and their scheming, these rebel southrons who had never yet been willing to recognize a Marhanen king. With that gray-glass stare and a question or two, Tristen could assail their very souls, snare them, entrap them in a spell of liking that had no cure… he could attest to that, for he missed sorely the man who had done all this to him.
He had sent his own messenger to Tristen, and another to Cevulirn, asking after their health, professing his gratitude… asking after his carts, in Tristen’s case, and hinting at a readiness to march in Cevulirn’s. He had a province of Amefel rescued from rebellion due to Tristen’s quick action; he had the Amefin people cheering his choice and not throwing rocks at his troops, which was also worth gratitude… if it were only a little less fraught with rebel Bryaltine sentiment for vanished kings.
All these things he had said, in letters to his two dearest friends, and realized thus far, muddleheaded with courtship and marriage, he had been very fortunate until this day simply to have had no disasters.
And as for Tristen, Tristen, whom wizard-work had raised or Shaped or whatever wizards minced up for words… there was no safer place to put him. Mauryl Kingmaker had sent them a gift thus double-edged, a soul who might be Barrakkêth incarnate.
And the Elwynim had long prophesied their King To Come, thinking some surviving one of halfling Elfwyn’s sons might creep out of the bushes and byways to proclaim his thread of Sihhë blood and claim the crown of the old High Kings.
It was, after all, safest that he had himself fulfilled all the prophecies he could lay hands on, naming Tristen lord not only of Ynefel, to which he most probably had right, but to Althalen, and to heretic Amefel, where they might proclaim him lord of most anything in relative quiet. The Teranthines could embrace such heresy. He… even… could bear with a neighboring king, even a High King, did Tristen somehow stray into power.
Dared he, however, could he, should he… ever mention such thoughts to a bride he hoped would remain on this side of the river, in his realm, a peaceful, not a reigning, wife? Among all the preparations he had laid, the moving of troops, the marshaling of aid in council, the hammering-out of titles to bestow on Ninévrisë Syrillas, and this cursed business of priests, sodden or sober… dared he even think the thoughts when he had a bride so gifted as Tristen hinted she was, who might pluck his guilty imaginings out of the very air? He was a king. It was his fate, his duty, to make as much as he could favorable to himself, and therefore to his people.
Pigeons flew up of a sudden, battering each other with their wings at a movement, a sound. The door had opened, and a messenger had come in, and two of his ordinary guards, and Ninévrisë, she… white and frightened, carrying her skirts as if she had been ru
“Your Majesty,” the young man had gotten out, before Idrys, too, arrived with his own aide in close attendance, and the young man looked around to see.
Disaster, and he and Ninévrisë alike could guess from what source. This young officer had come from downstairs, from the stable-court, from the road, from hard riding, and he was Lord Maudyn’s man, a messenger from his commander at the river.
“Your Majesty,” the courier said in a breath, “Ilefínian has fallen.”
Cleisynde was first at Ninévrisë’s elbow, of all the women, the cousins from Murandys, who poised their cupped hands under Ninévrisë’s arms, awaiting a fall, an outburst.
There was none. There were not even tears, only the evident pain.
Not an unexpected blow, Cefwyn thought, nor was it; but, black weather over there notwithstanding, Tasmôrden had carried the siege to the end, meaning the death of Ninévrisë’s loyal folk in the capital, her childhood friends, her supporters, her kin, cousins, remote to the least degree, all, all doomed and done in a stroke.
And yet she stood pale and composed, a queen in dignity and in sharp sense of the immediate needs. “When and how?” she asked the messenger.
“My lord had no word yet,” the man said anxiously, certainly knowing who Ninévrisë might be, but still caught, damn him, in a gap of stiff Guelen protocol that turned the messenger to him. “Your Majesty, I took horse as soon as the fires were lit. My Lord Maudyn will send to you with each new report he receives, but at the time I left, we knew nothing but the signal fires.”
It was tormenting news, disaster, and yet nothing of substance to grasp, no word whether the town was afire or whether there was an arranged surrender, or what the fate of the defenders and the nobles there might be.
“Rest for the messenger,” Cefwyn said. He had his standard of what ought to be provided for men and horses that bore the king’s messages, and his pages knew what to do for any such man. “Fetch A
“Your Majesty,” it was, and: “Yes, Your Majesty.” and all the world near him moved to comply; but nothing in his power could provide his lady better news, and what use then was it, but the ordering of armies that could bring her no better result?
“We knew it would come,” was all he found to say to her, with a stone weighing in the pit of his own stomach.
“We knew it would come,” she agreed, and turned and quietly dismissed her maids on her own authority. “See to the messenger yourselves,” she bade them, “in my name. And tell Dame Margolis.”
In tell Dame Margoliswas every order that needed be made in Ninévrisë’s court… as fetch A
But the Regent of Elwynor would stand as straight and strong as the king of Ylesuin stood, and not be coddled or kissed on the brow by her husband, even before the Lord Commander.
“ Isthat all we know?” Cefwyn asked of Idrys as the door shut and by the maids’ departure left them a more warlike, more forceful assembly.
“Unhappily, no more than the man told,” Idrys said, “but more information is already on the road here, I’m well certain we can rely on Lord Maudyn for that. There’s some comfort in what the message didn’t say: no force near the river, no signal of wider war coming on us. The weather’s been hard, by reports. Nothing will move down those roads to the bridges.”
“Thank the gods Amefel isn’tin revolt at the moment,” Cefwyn said. “Well-done of Tristen. Well-done, at least on that frontier.”
There was now urgent need, however, to move troops west, to the river, in greater numbers, and the transport was stalled in Amefel.
And to Amefel, the thought came to him, the fugitives of Ilefínian were very likely to come, unsettling that province and appealing to the softest heart and most generous hand in his kingdom for shelter and help. That, too, was Tristen’s nature, and it was damned dangerous… almost as sure as a rebellion for drawing trouble into the province that was Ylesuin’s most vulnerable and volatile border with Elwynor.