C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (21 page)

It was, crusty brown and full of gravy. They sat down at table and everything seemed redeemed. Wiser, older heads had patched all the harm, and peace would prevail, if only he could do the things he should do in the morning and pass the next few days without fault.

“And when Festival ends,” Aewyn said, “after all this is over and the to-do is done, then we shall have our hunting trip, even if your man stays on for festival in Amefel. We shall have my guards, my servants, so there’s no fuss at all about your man being away. We can hunt rabbits.” Aewyn popped a sweet into his mouth. “I can cook. Papa taught me how to cook on a campfire. I can at least do simple things. And we can bring most everything we need. Lots of blankets. It’s quite cold out there.”

The lodge seemed a sort of unachievable dream after this scrape.

Otter could hardly believe the king would let them go off together to the country with no authority to keep them out of mischief. He kept his opinion to himself, however. If Aewyn was happy imagining the lodge and its wonders, and them turned out free to do as they pleased, then he was happy to agree.

And increasingly, he had no desire to go off somewhere until Paisi could send him news of Gran—good news. It must surely be good news, he told himself. Enough bad had happened, and now, this evening, and with a full stomach, his fortunes seemed to have changed.

vi

THE JUNIORMOST OF AEWYN’S GUARD WALKED OTTER

DOWN THE LONG HALL TO his own rooms when Aewyn went to bed, and he was glad of the company. By that time the hall was on its fewest lights, and the shadows were deep and cold. He let himself in, saw his own fire banked for the night, and started violently when he heard a cough from the little side room, on his right hand, that room Paisi had never used.

Brother Trassin declined to stir forth, and he declined to summon him, only padded quietly past the fire and into his own chill and lonely bedroom to undress himself.

Paisi would have had a last log on the fire, would have warmed the bedclothes, would have shared his own warmth against the bitter chill, but he was satisfied enough to have Brother Trassin abed and invisible and by no means in the same bed with him.

The woodpile was greatly diminished. Paisi would have brought more wood up, with his own hands, without Otter’s ever suggesting it.

This priest hadn’t.

And clothes had, indeed, arrived; he saw that when he hung up the ones he was wearing. They were dark blue—nothing to provoke anyone. He had never seen queen’s servants come at all: if they had, he had been absent at dinner. But likely, he thought, Prince Efanor’s arrangements had replaced the queen’s with more specific orders and new plans.

And the windows in the main room and here had the curtains drawn. He never liked the curtains drawn. He went and tugged and pulled at the heavy draperies to open them wide.

In the tall window, in its very center, there was a Quinalt sigil hung, a pewter talisman as large as his head. He went out to the main room, confronted those drawn draperies and hauled them back, each one, while the sounds of snoring came from the little room beside the foyer. In each, there was a similar circlet, with the Quinalt symbol.

It was a ward of sorts, he supposed. He hardly liked it. The place already had wards. The sigils aimed at witchcraft, at Gran’s dreams, or his mother’s mischief, or his own wondering, he supposed. They might as well have been bars on his windows.

The same sigil, on a chain about his neck suddenly seemed part of the same design, but remembering what Prince Efanor had said about it being given in love, he feared to cast it off or, more rash, still, to bid Brother Trassin take those emblems down and leave his draperies alone.

He lit a candle and went back into the icy bedchamber. And by that light he found the queen’s candle and the evergreen gone from the mantel of the unused fireplace.

Dares he
? he asked himself, indignation rising.
Dares he throw
away her gift?

Clearly the man dared whatever the Quinalt pleased.

He set the candle on the mantel, shivering with all this walking about. By that flickering light, he flung himself between icy sheets, gathered himself up in a shivering knot, and tried to warm a spot, breath hissing between his teeth.

He could not trust this man to wake him in the morning. If he understood Prince Efanor’s warning, and Aewyn’s, the man would like nothing better than to find him in the wrong. He couldn’t trust the man for anything. He lay awake long, long, watching out the window, where the night sky made the Quinaltine roof look like the back of some great hulking beast, a predator lying in wait for foolish boys, and the Quinalt sigil hanging like a wakeful eye between.

Frost patterns had formed about the edges of the panes. He saw them in the candlelight, saw the evidence that the bitter cold he felt was no illusion. He thought of Paisi, afield on this bitter night, and hoped he was warmer than this and in better company.

He hoped Aewyn was right, that Brother Trassin was in no good grace with the king. He truly hoped so. Efanor himself both scared him and comforted him—he was almost sure of his goodwill, but had not quite warmed to him—Efanor being a very quiet, very thoughtful man.

He was glad at least the day had ended with his father knowing the truth, and Efanor trying to patch things, and Her Majesty on his side. That was a miracle in itself, a sign of things going much, much better in the world.

He shut his eyes on that thought. He held them shut, though the thought began to tatter and flow away from him.

He saw Gran’s cottage, looking so forlorn in its little enclosure, so deep in snow.

But it seemed that as he came closer and closer, he saw that the shutters were hanging askew, and that half the thatch was missing, charred timbers in the opening.

His heart beat faster and faster.

“Paisi,” he called out. “Paisi, something’s wrong! It’s all burned, can you see it?”

The house all fell in cinders, no more than a heap of stones and smoking ash.

“Paisi!” He cried. “Oh, Gran!”

“Boy,” someone said somberly, and he waked with a hand on his shoulder, a harsh and demanding hand, and a face lit from below by a candle. “
Boy
!”

It was Brother Trassin shaking him awake, his face all harsh lines and frowns, Brother Trassin, who kept shaking him needlessly now, and ordering him to pray for the sins that troubled his sleep.

“Good gods deliver us,” he said all in a rush, “gods save us.” It was only what Gran would say when he’d been particularly bad or when she was startled. Gods save us from fools, was the rest of what Gran would add next, but he held that back, with Trassin standing above him. He recovered his arm from the brother, rubbing the sore spot the man’s hard fingers had made. “It was only a dream, sir.”

“You were chanting. You were calling out names in a trance.”

“I was asleep. I dreamed. I called for my brother and my gran, sir, just that. It was only a dream. That was all.”

“Mind how you dream, then,” the brother said, “and what you invoke.” With that Trassin walked away from him, taking away the candlelight, which leapt and flared and found strange edges to illumine as it left. It found edges of the clothespress, on which foxes were carved. It sparked off dark windows as the brother set the candle down in the other room and began to draw the draperies across the windows.

“Leave those, if you please, sir. I like the sky.”

The brother left the curtain half-drawn, contriving to make even obedience disapproving, and turned, picking up the candle that gave his countenance the look of something carved and baleful. “The night is full of harm,” the brother said. “It’s nothing wholesome to look at. No wonder you dream.”

“Good night, sir,” Otter said, wishing the man would just go away. He was shivering, his bare shoulders exposed to the air, and he was embarrassed about the prayer he would not have tried to make if he had not been startled into it, and most of all he was worried about Gran and Paisi, in the dream he had had.

He drew the blanket up about his shoulders and sat there trying to keep warm until the man took the light away.

vii

HIS HOLINESS’ SPY’S INSPECTION TURNED UP ONLY HER

MAJESTY’S CANDLE for a sin,” Efanor informed Cefwyn, in the dim light before the dawn, before the procession downstairs. “I informed His Holiness whose gift it was, and we agreed there will by no means be any mention made of it in any record. The boy had nightmares. How not? I suggested that record, too, be expunged.

Clearly the boy is distraught at his companion’s leaving.
That
will be recorded.”

Cefwyn regarded his brother sidelong and hung a dagger from his belt, discreetly on the side his cloak covered, while Idrys stood in shadowy silence, armed and waiting.

“So his indisposition and his innocence will both be in the record?”

“I have the Patriarch’s firm word on it.”

“Bad business, still, this messing with magic,” Idrys said unbidden. “And no surety yet the boy won’t bolt to Amefel, or spill another bowl of oiled water in his lap, if his bad dreams go on.”

“He’s done very well,” Efanor said smoothly.

“For an Aswydd,” Idrys said.

“Hush, Crow, damn you!”

Idrys inspected the back of his hand, on which a scar healed. “It is worth a thought, my lord king. The boy has arrived at a certain age, capable of passing on the Aswydd blood, never mind its own claims to royalty. As to what that blood does contain—did you not bid me ask about his mother’s sorcery?”

“His wizard-work failed, you’ll note.”

“All the same, who knows? He’s of an age. I’d not have his choice of bed-mates influenced from the Zeide tower.”

That was worth a cold, direct stare at Master Crow.

Efanor spoke, from the other side. “I talked with the boy that day,” Efanor said. “He quite deceived me. He must have just come back from horse-thievery when I spied him, the cat straight from the cream, and not a trace on him. He has cold-blooded cunning. He has invention. He has a strong will. But he is not a thief, not a coward, and not, so far as I may judge, a sorcerer, nor even a wizard, considering the outcome of his efforts. Perhaps you should teach him the martial life.”

“He scarcely knows the sword,” Idrys said. “He can hardly manage his own reins or stay ahorse. So I hear. The lad’s employment in the army is questionable.”

“So he’s no soldier. You’re in no danger, Crow. Don’t fear him so.”

“Scion of a line you outlawed, my lord king, root and branch, living and dead…”

“And I rescinded the decree for Crissand, aye, for him and for Otter.”

“Elfwyn,” Efanor said. Otter’s proper name.

“It was His Majesty’s notion to declare that name to the people yesterday,” Idrys said. “And he spilled oil on that notion, right handily. Did he not?”

“Damn it, Crow, is there no mischief elsewhere in the kingdom you can attend? Must you lurk about and annoy me?”

“The boy had no reason to avoid that name being proclaimed,”

Efanor said.

“We know who would,” Idrys said.

“Her prison is secure,” Efanor said, “or nothing is.”

“Precisely,” Idrys said.

“Idrys has a man riding in that direction,” Cefwyn said to Efanor,

“and will advise Crissand to take all precautions.”

“Well and good for that,” Efanor said. “But if there should be anything amiss with the grandmother… Write to Lord Tristen, brother. I strongly urge it.”

“Get that weasel of a lay brother out of the boy’s rooms. His Holiness has seen enough, heard enough, imagined enough. The spy is a feckless fool, and the boy is already upset. Withdraw all appearance of guards.”

“To catch whom?” Idrys asked. “The boy, or the Holy Father?”

“Hush, damn you, Crow! Why,” he asked Efanor, “do I tolerate this quarrelsome man?”

“Which one?” Efanor asked, smooth as milk. “The Lord Commander, or the Holy Father?”

Idrys opened the door for them, performing the office of a servant in this meeting without servants, with only Idrys’ men outside, and at least one of their number, by Idrys’ word, well launched on a snowy mission to Amefel.

“Come,” Cefwyn said. There was worry enough, all considering.

Ninévrisë would be waiting for him, with the baby, who was not a patient child, particularly when waked and dressed before sunrise.

Aewyn would be fretting in the hall, or off looking for his half brother, to be sure, this morning, that Otter showed up for services.

He by no means liked the advice he had had from Efanor and from Idrys.

But if there were anything untoward in Amefel, Efanor was right: Tristen would know it.

Would you not, old friend
? he asked the amulet he wore.
Would
you not know if that vile woman had breached the wards
?

You promised us to watch over us. I’ve tried not to do foolish
things.

I’ve kept my word to you. That was never foolish, no matter what
Crow and my brother think.

viii

READY, READY, THOUGH OTTER WAS ALMOST LATE, AND

BROTHER TRASSIN STILL fussed with his cloak pin and wanted to teach him the morning prayers.

“Please you, sir, I mean to learn, only His Majesty is waiting. I have to go downstairs. Gods bless us.” He perceived it mollified the man when he said that, and he said it twice, breaking away. “Gods bless us, the Five bless us…”

It was the start of the prayer at least.
The Five bless us at
sunrise and sunset, in sunshine and rain
…

And shall they bless us in snow
, his rebel wits wanted to ask, and his terrors conjured worse than that.
And shall they, in fire? Save
us from fire. Gods save Gran from the fire. Oh, Paisi, go, hurry as
fast as you can
…

He escaped Trassin’s attentions and hurried as fast as he could keep his footing on the polished floor, out the door and down the hall, past the doors from which the few other residents would already have departed, onto the grand stairs, with a quick grip on the balustrade, his feet skipping ever so fast.