Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (5 page)

did everything in a great deal of fuss and uncertainty, and questions seemed to come to him faster than he could learn.

Wishes for solutions aside, he had not enough officers, not enough servants, no clear lines of appeal—and, as Tassand had informed him, unhappily there was no other person established as the authority. What had existed, Parsynan and Edwyll between them had destroyed; and now both were gone, and he was there.

Consequently everyone wanted his attention, everyone wished to establish their connections and their favor with the new duke, and in the process their demands pressed on him until his head fairly swam with questions. He did not know
who
should do these things. He had no idea. And under the incessant demands for his attention, he could not find answers.

Indeed he was so overwhelmed he feared even Crissand had motives in stealing him away for several hours in private…

points to press, favors to gain at the worst; and in agreeing to go, he knew it would wound him to the heart if that was all Crissand’s reason in seeking his company. He hoped for less selfish notions in this young man who seemed so inclined toward him. He hoped for some beacon in this sea of demands, but he had been disappointed before, discovering even master Emuin set his own will ahead of friendship and promises, and that Cefwyn, whom he loved, had as many demands on his time as he had.

He understood Cefwyn’s situation, now, in a way he never could have before.

But knowing that turned him desperately to seek warmth and Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

company where it seemed to offer. And, oh, that might be foolish of him, and expose him to hazards such as he had seen in Cefwyn’s court.

But he went. He trusted. He stormed through the last stretch of hallway toward the stable-court before more questioners could close about him—for he had been indoors for an entire fortnight now, imprisoned in his duty, in men’s squabbles and difficulties, while all the wonder of snow spread across the land outside his misted, frosty windows.

And now the chance was on him. He rushed toward freedom in simple, undilute curiosity, eager to meet the sights that had tantalized him and eager to have a horse under him for a few hours… eager most of all to have Crissand beside him and the sound of a friendly voice without a single demand for favor or approval of some document.

Cefwyn had made him duke of Amefel… and of all pleasures the high office might have afforded (the prior lord, Heryn, had ordered gold dinnerplates, and the viceroy, Lord Parsynan, had coveted a lady’s jewels), he discovered that the greatest and least attainable of all his treasures was time, time to ride out in the sparkling white and time to be with friends.

And when he and his accustomed bodyguards, Lusin and the rest, escaped out the west doors into the snowy damp air and thumped down the steepest steps in the fortress—he found himself both free and faced with a yard he had forgotten would be teeming with soldiery and oxen and carts.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“The lord’s come down!” A trio of stablehands scampered at the sight of them, dodging through the confusion of ox teams and heaps of equipment bound for the bottom of the hill, all shouting for the duke’s horses as they went. Tristen regarded the commotion with some dismay: nothing he did these days was circumspect or secret, and no one went sluggishly to accommodate him; the carts were going to the border, the army was going, this was the day he had appointed, and such had been his haste this morning he had not even realized his ride and the carts’ being loaded overlapped each other.

Almost as they cleared the bottom step, one of the stablemaster’s lads came laboring through the press with the tall ducal standards bundled together, brought from their storage near the armory, a heavy burden for a slight lad. It was a heavy burden, too, for the grown men appointed to carry them when they were unfurled.

They were inevitably cumbersome, and in the wish of his heart, Tristen would have bidden the boy put the banners back in their safekeeping so he and Crissand could simply ride free and enjoy the day in anonymity… but those banners were part and parcel of their honest excuse for riding forth today. They would show them abroad, ride through the town of Henas’amef in brave display, and visit the nearest villages, likewise: and all that was to confirm that, indeed and at last, Amefel had a lord watching over them and doing the sort of things a lord did. In a winter ominous with war and its preparations, Crissand had reasoned with him, the people needed to see him. Banners were for courage, and they Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

had to see them fly.

War… he did understand. Doors and orders for oak were another question altogether.

Perhaps Crissand might show him that, too.

Carts maneuvered with ponderous difficulty, one loading, one waiting. Uwen Lewen’s-son arrived through the gap between with bay Gia at lead—Uwen bundled up in a heavy cloak and with a coif pulled up over his silver-streaked hair. Tristen recognized the horse but not immediately his own right-hand man.

Uwen was more sensible than he was, Tristen thought, feeling the nip of the wind, in which his hair blew free. It was not a dank cold, but a crisp, invigorating one, with the sky trying its best to be blue. It was better weather than they had enjoyed for a week; but it might turn, and while he came from his hasty passage through the lower hall all overheated, he had his coif and cowl, his heavy gloves and lined boots, foreseeing wind among the hills.

“A fine day,” Uwen said. “Weather-luck is with us.”

“A bright day,” he said, his heart all but soaring. He had dreaded winter as a time of death, then seen it advance during their passage from Guelessar in an unexpected glory of frost… from his high windows he daily saw snow lying white and pure across the land and had wondered would it look as white close at hand.

And was snow like water, into which it turned, and did it change Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

colors according to the sky like a pond? He saw it take on the glories of sunrise and sunset, such as there were under a leaden sky. He waited to see what the sun would bring.

And with the arrival of the sun for the first time in days he saw the promise of wonders. Even in the brawling confusion of the carts and the limited vantage of the stable yard, he saw Icicles, which he had only just learned as a Word, and never seen so glorious as just now, on this morning of sun breaking through the clouds. They decorated every ledge and eave, and sparkled. The most casual glance around at the yard showed how a frosting of snow glossed all the common things of the stable into importance. He had never noticed the curious carving about the stable door, for instance, an unexpectedly fine decoration for a humble building: the lintel was beautiful edged in the sifting of snow, a carving of flowers and grain, appropriate enough for horses.

All around him such details leapt up, from the pure snow lying on the stonework edges, white instead of mortar, to the way it made a thick blanket on the stable roof.

With Uwen accounted for and his guard waiting for their horses, he stared about him in a moment of delighted curiosity, seeking other wonders, finding beauty even in the lion-faced drain spouts above them, that he had never seen.

He wished, of course, not to be seen gawping about, as Uwen called it: the duke of Amefel had to rule with dignity and become like other lords, immune to wonder, attentive to serious matters, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

never easily distracted from the solemn business of his rank.

Oh, but so many things were new in this, his first winter in the world. The eaves of the gatehouse and its roof slates shone so bright in a moment of clear sunlight that they hurt the eyes.

Never in the world was light so powerful, and yet the air itself was cold.

Meanwhile the lad with the standards had delivered them to Sergeant Gedd, foremost of the standard-bearers riding with him today, and was about to pursue his own business. But Tristen, seeing those two young, strong legs, pounced on the messenger he needed and nipped the lad’s sleeve before he could quite escape.

“My lord!” Eyes were round and cheeks were cold-stung to a wondrously fiery blush. “May I serve m’lord?”

“Go inside, go upstairs to my apartments, and tell whoever comes to the door that I’ve spoken to master Emuin, do you have that? Say that Tassand is to go up to the tower as soon as possible and set it in order. Do you have all that?”

“
Yes
, m’lord! Tassand’s to go to the tower!” The lad was solemn now, and puffed up with importance, and, dismissed, bowed and raced up the outside steps in frantic haste, slipping on the ice there.

There went more mud into the halls, but certainly the boy was no worse than the soldiers. Advising Tassand might have waited until he returned from the ride: he had all but forgotten his Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

agreement in the distraction of the hallway. But now Tassand would attend master Emuin before master Emuin could forget he had ever agreed, so they would not have that argument again. He might have the stairs clear and master Emuin’s noxious pots and powders out of the stairwell before evening, which might let Cook’s servants reach the old man with food without breaking their necks.

On such chance encounters and with such chance-met messengers he did business, and that, he was sure, was part of the trouble. When they had set out from the capital he had felt overwhelmed with the size of the staff he had brought along, and now he found it a very scant number to accomplish the running of a province. Cook, an Amefin woman, had found him several reliable new servants for the halls; Ness at the gate, who was Amefin, had found two more for the storerooms; and the clerk they had brought from Guelemara, a Guelenman who nevertheless looked to make a home here in Amefel, was looking for likely lads with suitable training.

The house staff he had inherited from Parsynan came from service in or to noble Amefin houses, each one of which had its ambitions and each one of which would hear reports from those they lent. Such servants as had served Lord Heryn and Orien had mostly fled across the river, some in fear of the king, some in fear of their neighbors and rivals… and those servants that did remain of the original staff had to be watched by the servants he trusted.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

But still he gathered them—all the servants, all the folk who in some way had dealt with him in his first days. He counted them part of Amefel, and his, even searching after the lad who had first met him as a stranger in Amefel and guided his steps to the gate-guards. He sought them out, guided them into his safekeeping…

and thus out of the hands of malign working from across the river, not enough of a staff yet, and those missing pieces were well scattered and hard to find again, which the more persuaded him it was necessary. He was
here
. He had a Place in the world.

Certain things and persons had led him to that Place, and having done so, they were snared in magic: therefore, they had to be found.

Meanwhile, waiting for the lost to return and for the staff to reknit itself, they were short-handed.

“So master Emuin is havin’ Tassand’s help after all,” Uwen said, standing beside him at the bottommost step, looking over the yard from that slight advantage, taller than he by that means, when ordinarily that was not the case.

“If he admits he ever agreed,” Tristen said. “But I’ve learned. I press my advantage while I have it.”

“Gods know what’s in them baskets o’ his,” Uwen said. “I ain’t pokin’ into ’em, an’ I hope Tassand’s careful. Gods know what’ll crawl out.”

The boys were bringing the horses up by now, and the guardsmen that were serving as his escort arrived, already ahorse, passing in front of one of the wagons. Its ox team backed away Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

from the crowding of half a dozen horses, not something an ox hitch or its wagon did well, and its left wheel aimed for a stack of barrels.

“Hold there!” Uwen shouted at the standing driver, seeing it in the same instant, and ran to slap the nearer ox on its rump and start it forward. The driver with his goad saw his dilemma and diverted his team on around the small circle of free space to face the gate, cart wheels not making the turn well, where Uwen again got to the fore, holding up both hands. “’At’s good. Now ye hold that cart right here, man, no matter who says otherwise, until His Grace is down the hill. Don’t ye be blockin’ the road.”

That effectively blocked all the other carts behind, who could not come through to load, but it saved them having that lumbering vehicle before them all the way down the hill… an incongruous precedence for a show of the ducal banners that would have been.

The carts were gathering up the tents and heavy stores to take them down the hill, a slow process, that evidently had not started at dawn, when the ice was hard: they must have waited for the sun.

And that raised a question where Captain Anwyll was, who was supposed to be dealing with the drivers and the setting forth of the supplies to the river. Tristen observed Uwen’s crisp passing of instructions, faulted Anwyll for his absence from the scene, then realized that he himself as the lord of Amefel had been more properly looking out for such considerations as the order of precedence, rather than gazing at the icicles.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Mooncalf, His Majesty’s commander had been wont to call him.

“Where is Anwyll?” he asked Uwen.

“Dunno, m’lord. I’ll find out.”

The safety of others depended on him. He saw numerous failings in himself which he was resolved to mend, and knew that, no, it was not usually the grand things in which he failed: he had very reasonably, if high-handedly, contradicted the king’s orders, taken the wide risk with the weather in sending Cefwyn’s carts to the border with necessary supplies instead of back to Cefwyn, where they would wait idle all winter. The carters were irate: they had expected to be done and back on the road in the opposite direction, headed for Guelemara and their homes before the snows blocked the roads for good and all, and instead they were out on Amefin roads, which were little more than cattle-traces.