Fortress of Ice

“Quinalt.” He was afraid of the Quinaltine, which loomed so large beside the Guelesfort. That priesthood had sent out decrees to trouble the lives of Amefin folk and Bryaltines and most of all wizard-kind, which was Gran, and him, as well as his wicked mother, all his life.

“Well, ye got to do some things different than ’oliday at home. These Quinaltines, mark ye, tomorrow they’ll just stuff themselves wi’ breakfast before the sun comes up, and again after the sun goes down, same as the grooms goin’ about to feed the horses. They don’t ever starve. It’s all show. It’s a lot of prayin’, an’ fine talk. An’ bluster.”

“It’s lies!”

Paisi’s face shadowed the second time with a look Otter could read as plain as words. “Don’t ye say that! Don’t ye ever say that except to me.”

“I’m no fool, Paisi.”

“Well, but ye’re honest, which can be right dangerous, ’specially if ye’re come at by surprise. Which I got to tell ye.”

“About what?”

“That there’s words in the Quinalt service that ye may have to hear an’ keep quiet, an’ ye’re not to look up when they say ’em or ask about ’em after.”

“How, words?”

“They curse the Bryalts. Now, mind, they may not do it nowadays. They used to do it in Amefel, till m’lord Crissand said otherwise, an’ then they don’t do it no more there, as I’ve heard. But this bein’ Guelessar, and the Quinaltine itself, I ain’t sayin’ they don’t, still, especially at Festival. It’s in the singin’. They used to say over an’ over, Death to them as is under the Star—which means the Sihhë; an’, Death to them as drinks the cup—which is the cup the Bryalts drink at ’oliday sunset. It’s about the old wars, an’ the king. An’ it’s just words.”

“Gran says nothing is just words if you have any sense. Why do they do that?”

“Well, the Quinalt ’olds it’s different gods we drink the cup to, and in their heads it’s witchcraft. An’ the Bryaltine in Henas’amef has a shrine they don’t talk about, which they don’t like. An’ ye know the Quinalt don’t ’old with wizards. Even the Bryalts is a little put off by ’t, except old Master Emuin used to come an’ go there, bein’ Teranthine, which is no different than bein’ a wizard.”

Gran was a witch, and Bryalt, and the Bryalt priests never had complained about his ma

“The Bryalt priests don’t mind a charm or two,” Paisi said. “But the Quinalts, you know they’re strong again’ the Sihhë.” Paisi had closed the clothes-press. Now he settled on the end of the bed. “And sure enough, the first Festival after Lord Tristen went west, the Quinaltines started doin’ the old hymns again, all upset, puttin’ things back in what they hadn’t done all the years. So ’e’s gone, an’ here they are, an’ the Bryalts bein’ foremost in Henas’amef—still, the Quinalt there got ambitious an’ was goin’ to put the words back, so the Bryalts said. So I went to the Quinalt service meself, an’ heard it plain as plain. The Star is hisba

Lord Tristen’s ba

“So they were cursing him.”

“No question at all that was what they was about. I ’eard it plain, just the way the fathers said it would happen, an’ I was upset. And old Father Haidur—you don’t remember him: he died when you was scarcely up to me elbow—but ’e was Lord Abbot in the Bryalt shrine, then, and he went right to Market Square an’ raised a famous fuss in town, tellin’ ever’body what the Quinalts was sayin’. After that, a couple of Quinalt priests got soaked in ale an’ tossed in a manure pile. So the Quinalt Patriarch went to Lord Crissand all hot and steamin’ about the disrespect, and Lord Crissand had hot words back with the Patriarch about them doin’ the hymn about Lord Tristen again, and the upshot was they stopped singin’ that hymn the next services, an’ ever’ year after. Far as I know, they still don’t do it. But here’s the Quinaltine, an’ ye just got to expect ’em to be Quinalt.”

Be on your guard, that was to say, in a place where the walls echoed to listening servants, and even the report of a dour look raced off to places there was no accounting. There’s spies, Paisi had said before they ever rode inside the walls of Guelemara, or up its cobbled streets. There’s spies in every hall up there. Look ’appy no matter what, an’ don’t fight. Don’t ye never let anybody provoke ye, boy.

“Well, well,” Paisi said in the stillness, “the king is lookin’ out for you, he’s goin’ to bring ye out in front o’ ever’body, an’ granted them colors is what ye’re to wear, he ain’t goin’ half measures. But there’s those here that don’t like the Amefin, and sometimes they say so, and act so, an’ puttin’ on a red coat is only goin’ to turn them heads your way—not too many of that mind, maybe, but ye don’t want to do nothin’ to make folk uneasy. Ye don’t get to Iaughin’ wi’ the Prince an’ ever forget it’s a solemn place, or let yourself frown when ye shouldn’t, so’s somebody can be whisperin’ about it after an’ sayin’ ye was talkin’ again’ the Quinalt or that ye wasn’t grateful t’ be there. Otters is slippery, but they shouldn’t ever, never get too confident.”

Otter nodded solemnly, with a colder and colder feeling coiling inside, after the first blush of pride at being invited with the family, then the unsettling matter of the red coat. Priests always made him anxious, even Bryalt ones, and he never had had dealings at all with the Quinalt sort before— Quinaltines were few in number in Henas’amef, sullen and aloof from most of the poorer sort of townsman and holding their services in a mostly empty sanctuary, for a handful of clerks, mostly travelers from Guelessar. In Guelemara, in the capital, the Quinaltines were foremost, and ruled everything, while it was the Bryaltines who kept one solitary shrine: it stood near the great Quinaltine, so far as he knew, while everyone important would go to Quinalt services. Even the queen, who was Bryalt herself, went to Quinalt services, even if she went to the Bryalt shrine later.

And by what her son had just hinted was the case, even the queen of Ylesuin daren’t put up holiday lights outside her own rooms, or hold holiday dancing or pass out festive cakes outside her own chambers, for fear of what Quinalt priests would say. There were bloody wars in the history of the Bryaltines and Quinaltines. There were riots, and murders. His father was king, but apparently even the queen didn’t dare do what she wanted, or speak her mind; nor could Aewyn, so that should warn him.

It appeared a grim sort of holiday, already. And the clothes by no means comforted him. The supper he’d had with Aewyn, so blithe and happy with naive plans an hour ago, sat uneasily on his stomach. But he was well sure that Paisi, who had spent his time in Lord Crissand’s halls, and in Lord Tristen’s service, was a clever man and generally good at finding out things, and very quick to warn him about things that could go wrong. The matter of the king’s gift had Paisi baffled, that much was clear: Paisi was warning him to walk carefully, and Paisi had found no way to ask deeper into the matter without, as Paisi might put it, starting every hare in the hedge.

He had to do the next asking, was what. Aewyn would likely sleep until noon—it was not at all uncommon. But Aewyn, when he did wake tomorrow, was the best person to ask—Paisi was right: he could get to Aewyn, easy as that, and if Aewyn himself said wear the clothes and ask no questions, well, then that was the Prince’s order, wasn’t it, and as high as he could reasonably reach.

So that was the wisest thing to do. He made up his mind to it. And he looked sidelong at Paisi, putting complete confidence into his voice. “I have no great worry about it. Aewyn will solve it when he gets up. And if it’s wrong—I can trust him to smooth things over.”

“He brung ye here. Ye ain’t fallen out, ha’ ye? He’s agreein’ t’ ye bein’ wi’ the family.”