He found himself missing her finger with it, or at least feeling weak in the knees, as it suddenly struck him that he was not making a political speech, he was well and truly sworn to a treaty with Elwynor and committing himself to a household and offspring and all of it. Somehow he managed to put the damned thing on the lovely finger, gave a second kiss on the other cheek, received one, and in a moment of dizziness, all was done. The trumpets blared out wildly, not at all together, and this time there were loud cheers: the Amefin town dignitaries and their ladies who were crowding the back of the hall for the festivities clearly loved kisses far better than they understood the treaties the lords were still thinking through with suspicion, and they saw that the speeches were over and that the wine was about to flow in earnest.
After that, thank the gods, the musicians struck up a merry country dance, and the crowd made for the tables where wine and bread and cheese were set, with mugs of ale and the little pies, a tower of which the guests rapidly demolished.
“You seem truly happy, my lady,” Tasien came to say, taking Ninévrisé’s hand, while Cefwyn was busy with a well-wisher from the town. “Are you? Dare you say?”
“I think I may well be,” she said, and Cefwyn, overhearing, drew in a breath of very heady nature. “I do think I could become so. Only take care. Do take care at Emwy.” She let him kiss her hands, then, and Tasien passed on to him.
“I am greatly taken with her, Your Grace,” Cefwyn said quietly to Tasien. “I shall send troops to reinforce you. But I made help to you no part of our agreement. The early betrothal—she asked the haste, so that you might be here, to stand as her father would have.”
“Your Majesty,” Tasien said, only that, and bowed, clearly not taking it for the truth, and managed to preserve a stiff and misgiving demeanor.
So he knew he had not won Tasien, nor, he thought, the rest of the Elwynim.
But eat and drink they would, and so with the common men with them, who had put on their best, and whom Ninévrisé had wished admitted to the hall and seated in honorable places, because, she had said before they came in, she had given every one of them a modest if currently landless title and promised them rewards from the Crown when they reached Ilefinian in Elwynor, they, or, if they fell, their next of kin.
So he congratulated each of them as they came to pay their lady their good wishes, and, a trick he had learned from Emuin, knew their names and their new titles, which won astonished looks and no small good will for himself, he hoped. So it was at least one half-score of Elwynim who were happily celebrating tonight, and, perhaps their natural wary bent,. or perhaps some sense of new responsibility, they were more modest in their attack on the wine-bowl than some ladies of Amefel, to look on the scene—and not participant in the handing-out of the diverse cups, none of a set, which he had declared the guests might take away with them.
That Amefin betrothal tradition had proved imprudent. There was no little wine spilled in the encounter at the tables.
“We should send a score of them up to the riverside,” he muttered to Ninévrisé. “Gods, such graces!”
Orien had somehow not come up to felicitate the marriage, but other Amefin lords and ladies were beaming. Tristen came up the step, and said in his own way, to Ninévrisé, “Cefwyn will do what he says. He is honest,” and to him, “She thinks everything is beautiful and the people are kind and she likes you more than she trusts you.”
Nin6vrisi5 was appalled and distressed. He was appalled and amused.
But Tristen went away then, as if, though able to know what he knew, he entirely failed to know the dismay he left in his wake. “Do you?” he said.
“Which?” she asked. But an elderly Amefin lady was attempting to hand Ninévrisé a charm done up in ribbons. “Children and grandchildren,” the lady said. “Hang it over your bed, Your Grace. It worked for me.”
He saw that Tristen had gotten himself some cheese and bread from the table below the dais. It was all Tristen seemed likely to secure for himself without warfare in the crowd pressing close, but Uwen was there, and, old warrior that he was, even while he watched, snatched a pair of plain, less contested cups of wine.
Dancing began, a handful of couples and a number of young gentlemen who, in the refilling of cups, felt immediately inspired—and though he had left the cursed stick propped in a side hall and had steeled himself to walk and climb steps without it, he certainly was not fit for this part of the festivities. The bride had now stayed longer than a Guelen bride would stay—though the continued line of well-wishers was adequate excuse, and would afford no gossip.
But the line had run almost to its end now, and he was thinking of passing her the hint of leaving when Efanor came up finally under the cover of the music and the noise of voices to pay a word or two.
“Your Grace,” Efanor said. “A gift, if you will.” He offered her a little book with the Quinalt sigil in gold on the cover. “For your meditations.
My priest gave it to me when I was first sworn, and I would be delighted if you would accept it.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Ninévrisé accepted it, and held Efanor’s hands afterward, at which he saw Efanor go white and then blush and look quite strange—as if, he thought, he had expected Ninévrisé to go up in smoke at the taking of the holy book. “How kind. Thank you very much. I shall treasure it.”
She let him go. Efanor went back to his priest, and excused himself along the wall and into the crowd, doubtless for fresh air. Dancers came between.
“That was very nice of him,” Ninévrisé said. “Is it a magical book?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Tuck it away. —Not there. Somewhere reverent. I’ll explain later.”
“Is it malicious?”
“Oh, no. I think actually very well-meant. Even a sacrifice. But you have to understand Efanor.” “I don’t see him.”
“He’s rather shy. We’ll see him in the morning. I fear he’s had a cup or two. He’s given away something dear to him.” “Then I should give it back!”
“No, no, keep it. He’ll never retreat from his generosity. And now that he’s been generous he’ll not know how to change the rules. Be generous to him. Trust me in this. It will do him ever so much good.”
An Elwynim lord was talking with Pelumer, gods bless the old man.
An Elwynim this very evening made gentry, Palisan, an excruciatingly handsome lad, was the quarry of Lord Durell’s plump daughter, and Lady Orien was nowhere in sight. Probably she had resented acutely the matter of the cups. But it seemed to him it was fair enough, the forgiving of a few taxes.
Probably she had resented most of all his inviting her—for which he was actually sorry, because he had not meant ill. But he plucked Ninévrisé’s sleeve and said to her very quietly,
“Dear lady, the King, who is very tired, is about to withdraw upstairs.
By proprieties the bride-to-be should precede him, since I’m told the party will grow so rowdy that only the Guard is safe. Will you do me the grace?”
She laid her hand on his and said, only for his ears, “Thank you, my lord.” And squeezed his hand with a little glistening in the eyes. “Thank you.”
He thought her very brave, seeing how things had been thrown together, and she had none of her friends, only Margolis and a couple of the Amefin ladies to attend her: very brave and very gracious, under the press of circumstances and ladies with fertility charms and his brother’s prayer-book. He gave the word to Idrys, who sent to the musicians and the trumpeters, and the music stopped and the trumpets blared out. He let Ninévrisé leave the dais first, with Margolis and with her own guard, and watched Ninévrisé accept words from Tasien and Haurydd and Ysdan, words and an avuncular embrace of each, since she would not see them before their departure for the border—in Haurydd’s case, tonight.