He slipped the lead-line over Tammis’s neck to be sure of him while he was enjoying his treat, and cold-numb fingers managed, with some little difficulty, to get the ill-fitting, cold-stiff halter over the piebald’s poll and settled behind his ears.
Then he could lead Tammis toward the gate. Tammis had no notion he was being stolen. He went cheerfully enough. There was little else he could give him, he knew, but the bread, if a horse would eat it. And how they should feed him when he reached Gran’s, not to mention his own horse’s appetite, he had no idea. He supposed he should take both Feiny and Tammis up the hill once he got home and turn them over to Lord Crissand, praying him to send them home to his father, so he and Paisi should not be obliged any further.
The thought hurt. He wanted not to think that far ahead.
He was careful to close the gate once he had passed it. The horsemaster had lectured him and Paisi very strictly about gates, as if he and Paisi had not come to Guelessar knowing that already, regarding Gran’s goats, who could manage most latches for themselves.
And there, in the snowy lane, he seized Tammis’s shaggy mane, poised himself, and vaulted for his back, bundle and all, the way the stableboys did. The first attempt, encumbered by the bundle, he slid right off Tammis’s rump and woolly side, but it was close enough to encourage him: the second try, in which he brought Tammis close to the fence and shifted his bundle to the hand that gripped the mane and the rein, let him make a leap, wriggle his knee across Tammis’s well-padded backbone, and thence ease astride, Tammis being a fairly patient horse.
Off they went, then, Tammis ambling along in no great hurry at first, then warming into a jog that kept them both warm. They reached the highroad, and Tammis was sure at that point that they would be going north, toward town, but he reined him about in a wide circle and turned southward, as the merchants traveled, with no one in sight north or south, in the threatening weather.
He had gotten away clear. He was going home, the same way Paisi had gone, and he would keep faith with Gran, at least. If she wanted him to go back again, he would tell Gran that the ways of Guelessar were not for him, that he was homesick, that he might see his brother later, on his regular visit—all such excuses as he could contrive.
And maybe his father would indeed come riding past with Aewyn as they always had, and maybe after much of a year had passed, they could exchange greetings and he could pay his respects to his father and patch things as if nothing very bad had happened.
Or maybe there would only be soldiers, to collect the horses, and bid him stay away from Guelessar forever, since he had done things so badly and made trouble with the priests. That notion, which he thought more likely, settled like a leaden weight in his chest.
He had dreamed of Guelessar in his childhood, and thoroughly enjoyed his first days in the Guelesfort, oh, so full of wonders; and with Aewyn for his friend. But they had taken a dark turn in the Quinaltine, at Festival, and he had no wish to see all the good memories go sour, or do further harm to his father’s reputation or to Aewyn’s. He wished no one ill—wished no harm, even to Brother Trassin, who had wanted to pray for him and save his soul, but he felt the urgent need, for this hour, to be far from here as fast as he could persuade Tammis to travel before the tangle grew deeper and darker. He just had to get home and be sure Gran was all right.
What he would do then—then, and forever afterward, he had no scrap of a notion. He had planned everything toward Guelessar, toward his father. Now he found himself not quite a man and no longer a child—even his time with Gran had become perilous, perhaps on the verge of passing. She was very old, and frail, and he and Paisi both knew she might leave them someday soon.
Then what? Then what, and where?
And what will I be, if I come home too late this time?
Gran had sent him out to find his fortune. His time with Aewyn, and among the books, had all been aimed at growing up and becoming a man who could support the family: Aewyn had been so convinced they would grow up together, and be allies, and now all that plan was gone, he began to realize it was not Otter the child who was coming home to Gran. Otter had grown up in his winter in Guelessar, grown up and gone away and looked to have very grown-up men angry with him and fearful of him.
Lord Crissand might not be as well-disposed as before, either.
Where was safety for them, then?
Tammis’s hooves found packed snow in a track where carts had passed, and thumped along good-naturedly, his breath frosting on the wind. Snow turning his shaggy mane white. Tammis carried him home, not at all the Otter who had left, but another creature altogether, one he hoped had, on this last day, grown warier and become harder to catch.
iv
IT COULD NOT BE TRUE. IT COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE, WHAT THE BODYGUARDS whispered among themselves.
“Who said Otter should go away?” Aewyn asked, breaking into his guards’ privacy in the little chamber in the hallway and standing squarely in the door.
The men—grown men, his father’s men—were all caught, and there was no graceful way to dislodge him without answering his questions.
“Your Highness,” Selmyn, seniormost, said, with a grave manner, “we very much regret to be the bearers of news His Majesty surely wished to deliver…”
“Why would my father send him away,” Aewyn cried, “when my father brought him here in the first place?”
“There seems to be some trouble,” Selmyn said, “Your Highness.”
“What trouble? What trouble would it be?”
“We don’t know,” Selmyn said, red-faced, clearly embarrassed. “But word is out that he has to leave—there’s a Guard contingent to ride escort tomorrow morning, Dragon Guard, Your Highness. He was to go to Amefel before the sun comes up. And watchers we know are running up and down the stairs in some haste.”
“The hell!” It was not language he was permitted to use, but Aewyn said it, and stormed out of the doorway and out into the hall and across the grand stairway landing to reach Otter’s rooms, his guard trailing him.
Why? he intended to ask Otter, first off and without preamble. Whatever trouble Otter had gotten into, there had to be time for cooler tempers to prevail. His father had gotten the family temper from his father and his father from his grandfather, and Aewyn had his own. They could all shout and threaten, but a quiet few words with Otter first would settle his stomach.
Then they could both go and talk to his father, and his father would listen to him. He knew it.
But when he opened Otter’s door and walked in, he found the fire still burning, but no sign of Otter, not in any of the rooms, only a book on the floor and a piece of paper beside it.
He picked it up. He read it, and things came half-clear, at last. Lord Idrys. Master Crow, no less. That was not just a problem. It might be deadly.
“Where is he?” he demanded of his useless guards. For the first time he was frightened.
“We have no idea, Your Highness,” Selmyn said, and Aewyn brushed right past him and headed back the way he had come, and on to his father’s rooms.
More guardsmen, standing outside the doors, came to abrupt attention as he headed straight through their midst.
The last, seniormost, had the temerity to lower a hand, barring his progress.
“I’ll see my father!” Aewyn said. “I’ll see him now!”
His guards had overtaken him. His guards and his father’s cast combative looks at each other, and the seniormost signed for silence and slipped inside properly to inquire if the king could possibly be interrupted.
Aewyn shoved the door open and walked in without leave. The guard’s quick move saved the door from banging.
“Father?” he called out, and saw the far doors shut, those that barred off the royal apartments, which generally meant a conference in progress. He headed for them, jerked the first open, and found his father, indeed, in conference with the Lord Chamberlain, who had been leaning over a table full of charts.