Fortress in the Eye of Time (27 page)

He'd not needed one before last night. Or had, counting what had been quietly going amiss over in Emwy district, and he had failed to see it growing.

Outlaws. Using shepherd weapons. And, if one believed Heryn Aswydd, rangers on horses, unusual enough in a woodland district. Rangers who didn't show themselves even to the prince's banners plainly and unequivocally displayed?

Not proper behavior, as he added the tally.

He crossed through the anteroom of his chambers and inside, where the servants were disposing bath and bed, and where Idrys was poring over maps on the sideboard.

“No change in him,” Cefwyn said.

Idrys said nothing. Cefwyn unlaced cuffs, collar, side laces, and hauled off shirt and doublet together, before the staff could receive all the pieces thereof.

“The men I wanted?” Cefwyn said to Idrys. “I'll see them between bath and bed.”

Idrys frowned. They had had their argument already: it
was bootless to dispute it in front of servants. Idrys said, “Yes, my lord Prince,” and turned and went.

Four messengers.

To four lords of the south besides the Duke of Henas'amef, proud Heryn Aswydd. There was a lesson to be taught, and it began now, before the sun had risen on this silken-smiling Amefin lord, who asked with such false concern after his safety, who rode in hall clothes out to the windy road to ask after a Marhanen's welfare.

Cefwyn shed the rest of his clothing, stepped into the bath and ducked down under the tepid surface long enough to scrub the sickroom heat from his skin and hair, long enough to count to twenty, and to want air; and to find the bath too warm for pleasure after the stifling warmth across the hall. Gods alone knew how Lewen's-son stood it.

“Your Highness,” Annas said, alarmed as he broke surface again—expecting a near drowning, perhaps; but Cefwyn found the draft from the open window vents more pleasant than the heat of the water. He clambered up to his feet, reached for the linen which a servant, taken aback, was slow to give him, and snatched it around himself, splashing the marble floor and the plastered walls as he stepped out. Servants mopped to save the woven mats and other servants scrambled to offer his dressing robe and more dry linens. The bath smelled of roses and hot oils. It cloyed. The water heated the air around him. He shrugged the dressing robe about him and mopped his own hair with the linen towel, ignoring the servants' ministrations as, in his wake, Annas ordered the just-poured bath removed, the bath mopped—the linens taken away.

“Leave it,” he said, and tossed the towel at the boy nearest him. “It can cool.” It took six servants half an hour to empty the cursed tub. “Do it in the morning, Annas, please you, I prefer quiet.”

Annas understood. The three pages seniormost in his service understood. The latest come, he doubted. But he sat down in front of a window vent in his double-layered robes,
and endured, still damp, the noxious airs of the night breathing from the open windowpane, despite his physicians' earnest disputations and predictions of the upsetting of his humors—his humor was vastly upset already, and if anything, the damp wind cleared his wits and made him less inclined to order summary execution for the servant who escaped Annas with an offer to light the, he was assured, already-laid fire.

“Out!” he shouted, he thought temperately, and moving to his desk, taking up pen and uncapping the inkwell, he wrote four brief notes to four provincial lords, affixed the seal of his personal ring, which precluded tampering with the ribbon he wrapped about each. Then he waited.

The chest was in front of him. The Elwynim chest. The bride offer.

And perhaps it was imprudent and tempting his own immoderate anger to lift the lid and to take out the ivory miniature, and to test his mood against that wide-eyed expression, the full lips, the midnight cloud of curls and swell of bosom daringly portrayed to entice a man, an offer of luxurious peace—to snare the heir of Ylesuin.

And ask—
ask
whether there were old bridgeheads being refurbished across the Lenúalim. Ask what this offer meant against the arrant folly of Heryn Aswydd who, if he were wise, might know his two sisters, fields for every plow, were temptation to lesser lords, but
not
to the heir of Ylesuin,
not
to promote His Grace Heryn Aswydd of rebel, perpetually heretic Amefel up to high estate in the court at Guelemara.

All that Heryn expected, in return for no more than a tumble in the bedclothes, for the latest gossip, for a whisper of Heryn's ambitions, for a night few whores could match for invention or few councillors for wit: oh, well indeed the twins (who came in a set, he had always believed, principally because neither trusted the other) were full of plans. By what he had heard, Tarien never,
never
forgave her sister her minute precedence into the world and would knife her in an instant if she thought Orien might gain anything above her.

Mothers thereby of a royal heir? No. That was for ladies richer, less versatile, more religious, less profligately trafficked, and certainly of larger, more influential and orthodox provinces. He could name an even dozen candidates of higher degree; ladies virginal, well-brothered and -fathered and -uncled—

Close-kneed, religious, limp and meek.

But—this—Elwynim. This—ivory bewitchment at which he stared, at odd moments, imagining that face alive with hints of both virginity and hoyden mischief—a crown of pearls and maiden violets, mirth dancing in the eyes, lurking about the edges of the mouth…

The Regent's maiden daughter and only offspring, a bid for peace, an end of the old rivalry.

Meanwhile the vicinity of Emwy seethed with so-called outlaws, that near the ruins of Althalen, that near the Lenúalim's dividing shores, open defiance aiming at seeing the Prince of Ylesuin come to the same end the Sihhë had met—while the Aswydds simply pursued kin-ties, bed-sharings and bastard offspring (who might be worth lands and money in the coffers of the Aswydds, if nothing else) and endlessly embellished this great gilt palace which, the prince would greatly suspect, came not only of hidden Sihhë gold, but of other sources.

Foolish offer, this ivory Elwynim loveliness. A message had come with it that Elwynor did not propose to yield up its sovereignty, but that the Regent's line, having come down to a daughter with no other royal prospect, considered a matrimonial alliance and separate title for the heirs.

Audacious. Damned audacious of a man waiting all his sonless years for the Sihhë to rise from their smoky pyre, or for Mauryl Gestaurien to mend his treason and send them a King.

The more to worry—considering the feckless young man across the hall, who'd shown a seat any rider could envy and a skill at riding he claimed not to have.

Damn Emuin.
Damn
Emuin for kiting off to prayers and
piety and leaving him a young man so full of mysteries. Every possibility and every fear he owned was potentially contained in the young man lying cold as a corpse in that bed—who might be fading, for what he knew, with Mauryl's power leaving the world, who might be ensorcelled by gods knew what, who might be afflicted by some malady that—naturally?—gods! came on the raised dead.

The source of souls, Emuin had said.

And fallen into languor at Althalen, the very place where the last Sihhë king perished?

He heard the sound of men entering the antechamber and knew by the plain fact there had not been a rush to arms among his guards outside that it was Annas or Idrys, and by the scuff and clump of soldierly feet that Idrys had come back with the men he had asked Idrys to find.

He disposed the miniature to the chest; he closed the lid; he looked up as Idrys shepherded his choices to his desk. Idrys took a stance with arms folded, his eyes disapproving; and Cefwyn ignored the pose as he had ignored Idrys' objections to his decisions.

Four men, plainly armored and armed, Guelen men. So was the patrol that was going out in pursuit of the bandit remnant that had official blame for the attack on the Marhanen prince. They were Guelen men, too, that patrol, with orders to believe nothing too fantastical of bandit origins, and to look closely at kinships with Emwy and with Henas'amef did they take any bandits—did they take any, which a gold sovereign would wager they did not.

But these four men would not ride all the way with the patrol.

Nor would the four parchments bearing the Marhanen Dragon and Gillyflower personal seal of Cefwyn Marhanen, the King's viceroy—who did have specific authority to do what he proposed, but who…
with
the King's grant of a viceroy's power in Amefel…held the royal command over this whole uneasy border, with authority the southern barons would ignore at their peril.

“A patrol will go out under sergeant Kerdin Ansurin,” Cefwyn said. “And once out of view of the town, you four will go your ways, avoiding all eyes; that is important. You, sir: this to Pelumer in Lanfarnesse; you, to Sovrag in Olmernhome; you, to Cevulirn at Toj Embrel, in his summer residence; you, fourth, to Umanon in Imor Lenúalim. Say nothing of this to anyone, not to man, nor woman, nor lover, light-of-love, nor your own barracks-mates. Walk from this room to your horses and join the band at the gates. A good opinion and reward if you discharge your missions faithfully and discreetly. The patrol you will leave is seeking the bodies of your comrades up in Emwy district. Believe there is danger. Believe there are those seeking Guelen lives. Be prudent, be quick, seek water only at brooks and springs, and lodge nowhere but under the sky.”

Heads nodded. Grim looks confirmed their purpose. Young, these men, but Idrys had chosen them, and he knew Idrys' standards.

“Further,” he said, “say no word of departure to any but your officer on the road, and if the lords to whom I send should ask you further of my business or the reason of the message, say that you understand that the summons is general; no more than that. You know no more than that. All else is surmise which cannot be profitable.—Have you any question? Ask now.”

There were shakes of heads, and “No, Your Highness,” faintly from two.

“Go, then.” Cefwyn leaned back in his chair the while the men filed out.

And waited, foot on the rung of the table, one ankle on the other.

Idrys came back and lingered, arms folded, a shadow in the doorway.

“You've given me your opinion,” Cefwyn said.

“Surely now you will need a fifth messenger.”

“How and where?”

“To your father the King, to explain what you've done.”

“Blast your impudence! You do surpass expectation.”

Idrys remained unmoved. “He will surely send to you then, my lord Prince.”

The bare foot slipped off the rung. He drew a deep breath and tucked his feet under him, canting his head at Idrys. “Tell me truth, master crow. Are you my man or his?”

“Yours, my lord. Of course I am.”

“Then grant I have some wit. Grant I do what I must.”

“Perhaps so, my lord Prince; but you know that it will not at all please His Majesty. You did well to send for Emuin.”

“Because he will
listen
to Emuin?”

“Because the situation on this border is increasingly unsettled. And it would be wise.”

“I am summoning the lords to consult.”

“You are raising an army to intimidate the Amefin, and there is no one who will fail to understand that. Best it were a Guelen army, not provincial, raised of their neighbors and quartered about this town.”

“Yield this inquiry back to my father? Come crawling to his knee and say I could not manage it?”

“You would win far more by filial humility than by what you propose, my lord Prince. An appeal for more troops would not be accounted an admission of fault or failure.”

“Are you my man, Idrys?”

“I have given you my oath, my lord Prince.”

“Then act like it.”

Idrys inclined his head slowly, with just irony enough to sting.

“My lord, a second time: wait for Emuin.”

“Because I will not take your orders, Idrys?”

“Because you are in danger here and I am not given resources enough to protect you from it. When danger comes into these chambers, I am one man, my lord Prince, with no more resource. The Guelen forces have lost man after man: niggling losses, but good men. You've just sent patrols out into the countryside. The remaining men will be on longer shifts, under the constant knowledge that they are
few among these Amefin. The kingdom could lose its invested heir here, my lord; and that would not well please His Majesty, either. I do not know how I should explain it to him. Forgive me, sire, but I seem to have lost your son? I think
not
, Cefwyn prince.”

“I hope to save you the necessity. Bear no reports to my father. Give me time to summon the march lords in. Once done is done, once I have the necessary troops to impose peace—my father
and
my brother will accept the settled state they see here.”

“That is not the way I know my lord King.”

“He loves me well,” Cefwyn said with a twist of his mouth, “only so I make no errors. My brother, now,—Efanor…is the one who will fret himself hollow at my maintaining an army here.”

“One cannot possibly see the cause.”

“I am the heir. Am I not? And shall I not, in I hope not imminent prospect, command the armies of eighteen provinces, including the ones I've summoned tonight? And why should my brother be anxious about four, now, as if I had cause to fling over my duties here and leap upon his privileges? Should I care, in his place, if he raised armies? But I do think he will care, Idrys; he was all out of countenance that I had had
you
to my household when Father posted me to this province. As if my brother should need a general in Llymaryn. And good gods! we have sworn
oaths
of our brotherhood. I do find it curious what men surmise one will do that they would do, Idrys. Do you ever ponder such curiosities? It seems to forecast
their
inclinations more than mine.”