Idrys shouted back. “The King is not dead—damn it, put those weapons away!”
“No!” the priest said. “You have brought the King under unholy influences, Lord Commander, among them this man’s! Arrest them, and the women!”
Idrys moved, spun about and set his back to the wall and his side to Tristen, and that quickly a dagger was in his hand. Tristen did not want to draw. It seemed to him once that happened there was no reason, and he only moved to prevent the guardsmen getting past him, men who showed no disposition to want to lay hands on him. The men of the Prince’s Guard that Idrys had brought were pushing and shoving those of the Dragon Guard who had come with Efanor and Gwywyn. On Idrys’ side was Uwen, who shoved his way through and stood with a drawn sword facing Gwywyn and his men, followed in rapid succession by Erion Netha and Denyn Kei’s-son—armorless, wild-haired, with shirts unfastened, both carrying swords unsheathed. They and men behind them, all of the Prince’s Guard, looked as if they had just waked and seized up weapons as they could.
“Hold, all!” Idrys said. “Damned fools! Your Highness, His Majesty is well enough. And he will have you to ask, sir, whence you made this illadvised assault. This is utter foolishness! Put the swords away, I say! Put them away!”
“I do not take your orders, sir!” Efanor said. “Until I hear the King’s word and see his eyes, I do not believe you—and I will have the physician, not a horse-surgeon, attend His Majesty, and other matters I shall set right, beginning with the inquiry into why an accident in the Bryalt shrine, and why the fire, and why His Majesty my brother is lying in peril of his life within hours after a betrothal that gave away far too much to an Elwynim witch!”
“Accuse me of sorcery?” Ninévrisé cried. “Oh, very well, dear sir!”
She snatched up a small book from off the sideboard and held it aloft. “I have your gift, my lord brother-in-law, I am reading your gift in search of your truth and your faith! I had not known it came with such other behavior!”
“Don’t listen to her!” the priest was shouting, and Ninévrisé:
“Oh, well, and am I so dangerous? I have dismissed all my men! I have trusted you! I have His Majesty’s sworn word for my safety and his personal grant of these premises for my privacy!”
“This is enough!” Gwywyn was saying, appealing for reason and truth, but the words were starting to echo, with the priest shouting, and Ninévrisé shouting, and of a sudden men were shoving one another again, and steel rang on steel, as came a stabbing pain at the base of his skull, Emuin’s presence.., drawing him in, warning him.., such as he could hear ...
Small and angry, something in the east.., close at hand. Deadly dangerous. A step in the dark, a burning of candles, candle-flames, not orange of fire, not blue of amulets, but smoldering black, with a thin halo of burning white, smoke going up in thin plumes above them ... above a fluttering of wings .... shadows and wings ...
—The east, he heard Emuin say. Harm ... against the King. The stairs. The east stairs by the grand ball ...
He could not get breath to speak, he could not think past the pain, except that he could not desert the lady, he needed help, and he snatched Ninévrisé by the wrist past Uwen and Erion, with the outcries of the servants in his ears, with Efanor bidding them stop him, and men attempting to do that, but Uwen and Erion were there with drawn swords, holding off a number who backed away from them, as he whisked Ninévrisé past the priest, past Efanor and Lord Gwywyn and in an instant in among the Prince’s Guard.
But that was not where he was going, blinded by headache and so afflicted by Emuin’s pain it all but pitched him to his knees. He reached the stairs. Ninévrisé was crying out questions. He realized he was holding her too tightly, and let her go, wishing her to come with him. Hearing Idrys and Gwywyn shouting at each other above, he ran, and she ran with him, down and down the steps- He was aware of alarm in the lower hall, then, people staring in fright as they passed, people trying to intervene with questions. He saw the east stairs in front of him, and he did not need Emuin now. He knew. He felt it, a small tingling in the air, but a presence, nonetheless, that had taken alarm.
“What is it?” Ninévrisé breathed, hiking her skirts, trying to overtake him on the steps as he reached the floor above. Orien’s guards looked at them in startlement as they came.
“Sirs,” he said as calmly and reasonably as he could, and hoping pursuit did not overtake them. “Open this door. Now.”
The guards did as he ordered. He had never been past the foyer of lady Orien’s rooms. Now he went past those inner doors, with Ninévrisé and the guards, as women inside cried out in alarm. In the opening of both inner and outer doors, cold wind gusted through a window-panel wide open to the night, and carried on it a stinging, perfumed smoke. Candle flames wavered in the gale, and flung shadows about a group of black-clad women with astonished faces, horrified looks.
In front of them were candles on a table, a basin of something dark, severed red braids and a sprig of thorns. Among those women he felt presence, and chief of them he sensed was Orien Aswydd, who faced him with her face stark and hard, in the flaring light of a single candle. All the other candles had gone out.
“Damn you!” Orien said, and indeed there was a flash of gray and a tingle in the air.
“Is this Orien Aswydd?” Ninévrisé demanded. “Is this Orien Aswydd, who killed my messengers?”
“Get out!” Orien cried at her, then, in fear, “Keep away from reel” for Ninévrisé brought anger into the gray world—Ninévrisé started for her and women scattered, and Shadows scattered around them. It was not good to feel. It shivered through the air, it set all the gray to rippling like curtains, fluttering like wings. It welcomed anger.
“No!” Tristen cried, and seized the table edge, overturning it in the way of the women, and the candles and the basin and all went over in the light from the door. Fire flared in the spilled wax on a woman’s skirts, and shrieking, the woman tried to smother it.
In that firelight metal had flashed in Orien’s hand. He saw it, spun Ninévrisé back as Orien came past the end of the table, and evaded her as another woman drove a blade past him. She did not aim well, he thought, and in the slowness of such moments and without difficulty he caught the woman’s wrist—in near darkness: one of the guards had smothered the burning cloth and the other stopped the women from fleeing. He took the knife and let the woman who had attacked him go, at least to the keeping of the guards.
But Orien also had gone down in a pile of dark skirts and Ninévrisé was standing on Orien’s hand with one slippered foot. There was another knife, as the guards were finding the women in general so armed; and Ninévrisé trod hard on the hand when Orien tried to claw her ankle and tried to overthrow her by dragging at a handful of her skirts.
Tristen bent and took the knife from crushed fingers, then took Orien by the wrist, pulling her not entirely gently to her feet.
“Damn you!” Orien’s eyes burned with rage and with fear. She fought to be free and he let her go. “Damn you!” She spoke Words, but no sound came. Wind blasted into the room. “Good bloody gods,” one guard said.
“I think you should take her away from here,” Tristen said. They were Names she had spoken. He did not know what they attached to. He found no image of them but dark. The air felt far less dangerous after that gust, but a cold wind was still breathing through the open panel.
“Shut the window, sir. I think it’s far better shut.”
“On my soul we had no idea, m’lord,” the chief of the guards said unsteadily, while the others held the women—there were five of them—at bay in a corner backed by shadowy dark drapes and gilt cord. The light all came from the hall, the doors open straight through, but that itself was dim. Came then another touch at the gray—but that was Emuin, glad despite the headache, glad to know what was happening, though Tristen felt a fine sweat on his skin and felt the room go around only in that instant of awareness.