The King's Peace (26 page)

I bit into the bread. "Peace in this hall," I murmured.

"And a welcome to you who keep the peace within it," replied the servant. His expression now was one of intense relief. He cannot often have seen someone hesitate over accepting hospitality of the house, I thought. I wanted to laugh out loud.

"I am the eldest daughter of Gwien of Derwen," I said, and paused, politely, for him to tell me how he should be addressed. The blood left his face and he looked grey. The look on his face was as good as a picture. I took a sip of my drink to hide my smile. It was good spiced cider, ideal for a cold day. Just then, to my relief, my father came up to me.

"What are you doing, Dal?" he asked, sounding horrified. "This is no stranger; this is Sulien, my eldest child."

"Lord," he stammered. He tried to touch his hand to his head, but could not, because of the
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tray. He looked at me again, stricken. He either had really not known or he was a very good actor. "I beg pardon."

"He meant no harm, Father," I said. "It is a long time since I have been here." And in my heart it was not my home, my home was in the alae, looking forward between a horse's ears. I knew that then, but did not say it.

"Veniva will have your ears," Gwien said to him. "This is Daldaf ap Wyn, Sulien, your mother's steward. You will know each other again, no doubt." Daldaf blushed now. "Go on, take that cider round. Don't chatter about this mistake to the others." Daldaf bobbed his head and moved off with the tray. Gwien turned to me. "You're truly not angry, Sulien?"

"No," I said, and I was not.

"Let me tell Veniva about it then," he said. "It will have to be put the right way, or she might feel she had to send Dal off, and she has just got him trained to her ways. He is come out of the east and he is a great help to her now that the household has grown so."

"I was admiring how it has grown," I said, gesturing to take in the hall.

"I wanted to rebuild as a fortress," he said, "but Veniva wouldn't have it, it had to be Vincan style or nothing, 'our strength is not in stones but hearts,' you know her way. The walls are thick, though, and you will have noticed how the windows would give a good field to an archer?"

"I did indeed," I said. "But the next line of that is 'stone-strength shows how heart-strength holds,' and we need strong walls and strong hearts both, Urdo says."

Gwien beamed, straightened himself, and hugged me again. "I see by your cloak you're now a praefecto of the High King? When did this happen? You shouldn't have been away so long, Sulien, I've missed you. And you've grown taller than I am, I wouldn't have thought it."

He seemed proud of it. The truth was that his back was a little bowed because of his injuries. We would have been eye to eye otherwise. But I didn't tell him so. I was very pleased to see him and to have him approve of me.

"I've missed you, too," I said. "But I have been so busy in the ala, Father, and I have enjoyed it so much. After Caer Lind Urdo has made me praefecto of his own ala."

"That's a great honor, wonderful thing," Gwien said, and clapped me on the back. "I always knew you'd do great things; Duncan and I used to say so when we saw you going at it with a sword when you were quite small, you and Darien." His face clouded, then he smiled again deliberately. "Sit down a minute and let me look at you, so tall and fine you are." We sat down together on the window seat. The shoulder piece of my armor caught the sunlight and blazed out. Gwien looked at it and said in quite a different tone. "Where ever did you find this, Sulien?"

"Urdo gave it to me. Isn't it splendid?"

"Is there a dragon on the other arm?" He looked, and there was. "You know, I think this is the very armor my mother used to wear. She was killed when I was just a little boy, but I remember her wearing this and showing me the pictures in it. I thought it had been lost with her."

"Urdo said it was in a chest in Caer Segant. He said the dowager Rowanna found it and thought it might fit me, and so he gave it to me after Caer Lind when I needed some new armor. He said they thought it belonged to a giant, but it could just as easily have belonged to my grandmother I suppose. How strange though."

"Not really, if it was size they were going by. There aren't many women big enough to wear this.

It's beautifully made stuff, and I'm sure it's the same armor. Galba may remember it too.

Galba! Come and have a look at this!" Duke Galba excused himself from a group that contained his son, Aurien, Veniva, and Idrien, and came over to us.

"You remember my mother, don't you Galba?" said Gwien. Duke Galba inclined his head.

"I was only ten or eleven when she died, but I do remember her," he said.

"Then look at this armor and see if it looks familiar." I stood and let the two old men look at it. I preferred the story about the giant in some ways. I tried to remember what I'd heard about my grandmother, other than that she'd been killed fighting in the civil wars. I couldn't even remember her name. I knew my male line ancestry, Gwien ap Nuden ap Iarn all the way back to Edwy who escaped the Flood with his eleven companions and was shipwrecked on our shore and married a woman made out of alder.

They'd all had to make do with trees for wives and the trees were the only women's names I'd been made to learn. Duke Galba shook his head slowly.

"I think I do remember her wearing it. Well, well. Though it was all a long time ago.

Getting on for fifty years. I wonder where Urdo got it from."

"From a chest in Caer Segant." I repeated the story. "The odd thing is that they didn't send it back here with her things, if it was hers."

"Things were very confused then," said Duke Galba, frowning at the memory. "In any case, if it was a royal gift, if it had belonged to someone from the land of giants before, perhaps Emrys took it back. I never knew her well, but wasn't she from Caer Segant?

Maybe they gave it back to her family instead of to Nuden."

"I think she was a Vincan, but she'd certainly lived in Caer Segant, it's marked as her place of residence m the register "when she married my father," said Gwien. "I don't know her father's name, she's just written down as Laris."

"Laris?" I said. I must have heard the name at some time because it was familiar, but it hadn't stayed in my mind. "Urdo said the giant was called Larr. She wasn't a giant, was she?"

Duke Galba laughed and looked deliberately upwards at me. "Your height on a woman would be enough to get called one, by sailors and farmers. Not a giant like in those Tanagan legends, big enough to wade the sea between here and Tir Isarnagiri, but maybe a giant like the ones Sextus Aquila mentions who live at the back of the North Wind. I can see why they said that in Caer Segant if the Emperor Emrys did indeed bring her back with the horses. Nuden married her when I was a child, and I don't remember any stories about who she was then, but then it wasn't the sort of story I listened to very closely in those days." The old man smiled.

"Well I never knew it if she was," said Gwien, smoothing a crease from the leather sleeve of my armor. "I thought you looked like my mother when I saw you riding up, and it's good to see her armor again."

"Giant's blood in my line, well," said Duke Galba, looking at Galba and Aurien, who were looking into each other's eyes. "I thought it was a magnificent gift when I first saw it, but this makes it even more special."

"Oh no," said Gwien, in a different tone. I looked at him. "Veniva's bringing out the musicians already." He sighed. "There will be dancing, I'm afraid, before we eat, and I shall have to stand with her." He limped off across the hall. I felt for him. He had loved dancing when I was a child.

"And now Sulien," said Duke Galba, "tell me what Urdo is going to do in Tinala?"

"You'll have to ask your son, I'm afraid," I said. "I'll have to change my clothes right away if there's going to be dancing."

It was an hour before I managed to get young Galba on his own, and into the middle of the dance floor. He had the dazed look of the newly in love, and he had hardly been three feet away from Aurien since we came inside. I had made my way through several dances already. I was pleased to see that people were more polite in how they issued invitations than they used to be when last I danced in my father's house.

"What's so important," Galba hissed as the line brought us together. "If there was an attack they'd have called."

"What's Urdo going to do about Tinala?" I asked him. He laughed, swinging me and catching me again.

"Who's asked you?"

"Your father and my mother and Duncan. I told them to ask you."

"Oh," He looked surprised and almost stopped backing. "It was your father and my aunt and Emlin who asked me."

"Well, what's the answer?" I called, catching Kerys ap Uthbad's hands, and spinning with her. She was wearing a very splendid overdress of red and gold.

"I told them to ask you," he said, and laughed again as we danced towards each other.

"I told your father that Urdo isn't an idiot, and he said in that case he'd throw Flavien ap Borthas out and replace him with someone loyal. If it wasn't for that I thought they were worried about the Jarns." I had thought that myself.

"I didn't see any sign he was going to throw him out when we were there," I said, dancing away again. "And he hasn't done anything wrong."

"I don't know." He laughed again.

"Are you drunk, Galba?"

"Two beakers of hot cider, you can't call that drunk!" he said defensively. But I'd seen it before.

He was drunk on the thought of Aurien. He was intoxicated over an arranged marriage that was just right for the families that he'd told me seriously only a month before that he was intending to make the best job he could of. I looked questioningly at him as we danced up to each other for the last time and touched hands. "If Urdo wants someone to reassure people politically down here, he should have sent Raul," he said, frowning. Then he bowed to me.

The dance was over, and Aurien was waiting for him.

Duke Galba and Veniva both made for me as soon as I was alone. My mother reached me first, bearing down on me like a raider ship in full sail.

"Will the food be soon, Mother?" I asked. I was starting to feel really hungry. I also felt the need of a diversion. I looked for my father, but he was talking intently with Idrien of Talgarth. The light fell on her face from the side, and she looked much like Enid, except she had no scar.

"It won't be long, but never mind now," she said. "And I haven't come to ask you what you're doing dressing up as a Vincan senator—I suppose you have a right to those folds through my great-great-uncle, but I don't think you know it." She smiled a little grimly at my drape, which was folded the way I had been wearing it ever since Amala had shown me how. "I don't suppose anyone else recognizes it or cares. Quickly. Gwien tells me Galba said Urdo will depose Flavien ap Borthas, is it true?" We were standing near the musicians, and the sound of the lyres and horns shielded us from eavesdroppers.

Duke Galba reached us before I could speak, coming up very like a Vincan senator himself though he was wearing a usual tunic and leggings. "Tinala, child," he said, "my sister Idrien says my son doesn't know the High King's intentions, and it's important."

Looking from one face to the other, both so aristocratic in the Vincan model, I had no idea what to say. "Urdo's no fool, sir, Mother," I said, hoping it would work.

"Then he won't offend all the kings by throwing Flavien ap Borthas out?" said Duke Galba.

"Why would he?" I asked. Then I took a deep breath. If Urdo had wanted diplomacy, he'd have sent Raul. Very well, but I didn't think Urdo knew diplomacy was needed.

"Look, to tell you both the plain truth, I have no idea what Urdo plans to do either. He told Galba to cooperate with both of you and with Uthbad One-Hand." Uthbad was dancing with Kerys now. His hair was still cut short for mourning. Seeing them together I saw the great resemblance between them; she was much more like him than either
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Cinvar or Enid. "He expects all-out complete war in the east with a chance to really win, to beat the Jarns, to make the peace."

"We all want peace for trade to flourish," said Veniva. "But more war first?" Behind her the servants were beginning to light the lamps. They were real Vincan oil lamps, not candles. I wondered in the back of my mind where they were getting the oil from. We were rarely so grand in Caer Tanaga.

"What news have you had of what happened in the north?" I asked.

"Very little," said Duke Galba. "That a great Jarnish army had invaded and Urdo has made a marriage and an Isarnagan alliance to beat them, and that he has beaten them indeed but allowed Borthas to be killed. That he has troops all over Caer Avroc."

"Beaten them would be a great exaggeration," I said ruefully. "We had a victory, but their army is still for the most part whole. As for Borthas, he was killed, yes, but it was not really our fault and most certainly not our design." I could see how it could be made to seem so. "We made a wrong guess, but we thought he was heading back to safety. We were almost killed, too. Our captain, Osvran, was killed. It's a long story. When I get back I will see to it that messengers send news regularly to all the kingdoms about how the war is going."

"That is a very good idea indeed," said Duke Galba. "Veniva raised her chin."

"There will be worse war than there has been, but mostly in the east, I think is what Urdo expects. The Jarns are a long way from beaten yet," I said.

"And what about Flavien ap Borthas?" asked Duke Galba.

"I don't know for sure, but I think if Urdo had been thinking about doing anything about Flavien ap Borthas or about Tinala other than defending it against the Jarns as well as he might, he'd have told us so we could reassure you. Why are you worried about it?" I was looking at Duke Galba, but it was Veniva who answered.