There had not been another choice but the Aswydds and their ilk to rule the province. There might be, now. Annas had been instructing Tristen in protocols, in manners, in courtly matters, and Annas reported him a quick and gracious hearer. “A pleasure, m’lord,” was Annas’ assessment of him.
He climbed the stairs, went back to his apartment and to, as he planned, the cursed books, wherein his accountant had placed small papers and notes explaining the artistry with which the Aswyddim had entered here and entered there their meandering sums.
He left his guard at the doors, went through with the sergeant of the detail to open the door for him, and went inside.
A movement, dark and unexpected, by the window, caught his eye.
Idrys.
Cefwyn dropped his hand from his dagger and the beating of his heart began again.
“My lord,” said Idrys. “We could not overtake the messenger. A horse was hidden for him at the Averyne crossing.”
“He is to my father,” Cefwyn said, on his second whole breath. “So swears Heryn.”
“That was his direction, my lord.” Pale dust overlay Idrys’ black armor and etched lines into his face, making his eyes starker and more cruel than their wont. “I returned when I saw that there was no likelihood of my both overtaking him and reaching the town again by dark; I dispatched men in pursuit, but if he rides to the limit, on that horse, he may escape them. That he is bound for your father may be the truth; but that is not the assumption the guard will make if he lags within arrowflight of them. Unfortunate man.”
Cefwyn frowned and folded his arms. “We have come to a point of final reckoning with Heryn. He trusts he knows my limits. He is about to learn he does not. I am glad you did return.”
“You have reckoned the consequences, my lord, both personal and general, of a breach with the Aswyddim?”
“I have reckoned them. This Heryn Aswydd is a soft-surfaced man, but there is steel beneath the velvet, Idrys. We were well rid of him as Duke of Amefel. He trusts I dare not do it. And he thinks he knows my resources. He’s probed for Tristen’s provenance as other than Ynefel, he seems to hold suspicions that I’ve contrived accusations against him merely as a threat, nothing of substance I dare actually carry through.
And in that matter he is very ill informed.”
Chapter 18
T sun was far declined and red when the remaining lords arrived. Black-bearded Sovrag of Olmern and his rivermen hit the town out of the northwest, having navigated the Lenfialim through Marna, and having caused the gate wardens of the lower town great consternation when he insisted to bring a large clutch of his own guards about him into the town, the men of the Black Wolf banner, rougher and less mannered than their lord.
So Cefwyn heard on a message run up from lower town. He sent down to the Zeide gate to let the man and his escort in, and met him in the lower hall, himself, to his guards’ dismay.
“Ha, Marhanen-lord,” Sovrag called out—he towered over most men, this black wolf of Olmern, who had taken his lordship rather than inherited it. He was nearly as wide as two men: no common horse could carry him, and he most-times went by boat, where boats could carry him. His voice was fit to rattle the glass of Heryn’s fine windows.
But Idrys, turning up at Cefwyn’s shoulder, murmured, “That escort of his is show for Cevulirn and Umanon,” for there was bad blood there, and no secret of it—and the camp he had designated for the Olmernmen was to the town’s north, on the river approach, well away from Umanon.
Cefwyn walked forward and gave his hand to the lord of Olmern-”Well,” he said, “well, my lord of Olmern, welcome to the hall. I doubt you’ll need quite so many men—but I would most gladly borrow them for posting; my own guard is stretched thin, and I trust your folk had sleep on the river, true?”
He had last met Sovrag on the occasion of his investiture as heir.
Sovrag had seemed truly giant then, less so now, grace of a span or two he had grown.
Likewise he knew that Sovrag in days past had raided on the river as much as he now traded on it. And trade with Elwynor he might, too, but never quite hide the fact: he was an unsubtle man.
A greeting hand-to-hand was surely not the welcome Sovrag usually met, and certainly not the one he knew he was due for his armed incursion. It was a test, Cefwyn reckoned; a test of his welcome and possibly a test of the Aswydds, with whom relations were not cordial. But his bearded face split in a grin. “Your Highness,” Sovrag said, and clapped him on the arm fit to leave marks. “If you’ve use for these scoundrels of mine, be sure they’ll follow orders. Gods, ye’re grown to a proper man, Marhanen-lord.”
“You’ll find water and wood at the north gate, space for you and your bodyguard in the southwest tower—ample space there. The Ivanim and the Imorim are lodged easterly, and I am lodged between.”
Sovrag burst into laughter. “Aye, m’lord Prince!” he said.
“I’ll send you there, then. Boy! Show m’lord to the southwest tower, and put him in the hands of the staff.”
And, dismissed to the guidance of an apprehensive Guelen page, Sovrag went his way with his escort shambling about him, loaded with rivermen’s canvas bags, and armed with the dirks and hooks their trade made more useful than swords.
Within the hour a fight erupted between an Ivanim and a riverman of Olmern in the stableyard, and Pelumer’s folk of Lanfarnesse had ridden into the midst of it.
“Can they stand?” Cefwyn asked of Idrys.
“The Ivanim and the Olmernman? Scarcely but they will live, m’lord Prince, except your justice. Guelenfolk separated them. Amefin were laying bets.”
“Bring the two. I will see Pelumer here, too.”
Idrys went. Cefwyn shook his head and called Annas for wine, and when it had come, drank it slowly to settle his stomach.
He feared now for what he had done, having the actuality of the lords of the region within the Zeide, a troublesome mix of highborn men within, and old feuds seething among their men camped without the town.
There were, added to the mix, the inns, the wineshops, the Amefin women, peasant cottages, and the Olmernmen in force inside the walls, who were never more than river pirates save by the grace of the King’s grant of a township to the man Sovrag had knifed in a dice game.
The prince, meantime, feared Heryn’s subtlety, if he invited him to the formalities tonight: Behold me, how I am wronged. He feared as well the subtlety of Heryn’s staff, if he excluded the lord of the Amefin from festivities in his own hall.
Orien and Tarien would ply their talents to the same end. Cevulirn was too cold for them, and Pelumer too wise, but Sovrag and Umanon, each with a different sort of vanity, both were vulnerable.
Men approached the door. He took a chair at the table, in front of the account books, still with the wine in hand, and with a sidelong glance surveyed the bloody pair that the Guelen guard brought him, men chained together.
And ignored them a time, in favor of the accounts—while their wounds doubtless ached and they had time to realize together that they had broken the peace of the house with their brawling, under the hospitality of the Crown.
There was hanging for that offense.
“My lord,” said another page, “Pelumer Duke of Lanfarnesse.”
And that was superfluous, for there immediately, past the overwhelmed page, was Pelumer at the door, and Cefwyn left his chair and his wine with a quick smile and a welcome. Pelumer was the oldest of Ylesuin’s barons, white-haired and bearded—with his Heron banner, a frequent winter visitor at the court in Guelemara. His sun-seamed face was a sight, as it were, from home, though Pelumer’s land of Lanfarnesse was southernmost of all of the southern lords.
It was more than a handclasp: he embraced the aging lord with the same warmth he had felt when he had been a boy and Pelumer’s hair had been darker. Pelumer had given him his first lesson at archery. Now he felt the warmth of a friend of the Marhanens, and of safe company.