He stopped dead on that thought, stopped so long that his boot soles scorched and stung. He imagined the moment he would face his father. “Sire,” he would say, “Paisi went home to see to Gran.” That was certainly the truth.
But then, inevitably: “Why?” his father would ask.
And what could he say? They were all Quinalts here, except the queen, who had no reason to love him because he was the king’s bastard, whose presence here had to be an embarrassment to the family; and it was the Festival, when everybody was confessing sins and being particularly holy—
And what could he say to excuse his actions? Gran sent us a dream? Or: because we dreamed the same dream, Paisi had to go?
They hadn’t quite thought that part through. Thinking of Gran, it seemed so natural and reasonable, what they did, even the unnatural run of luck that had guided them, and guided Paisi. But the moment he thought of explaining his reasoning to his father, things appeared in a Quinalt, Guelenish light, and it was neither natural nor reasonable, as Quinalt priests would look at it. It was a Sending that had called out in their dreams. It was witchcraft, pure and simple, which was the same as wizardry: Gran was a witch, and he the son not just of a witch, but of an Amefin sorceress—he was the lasting embarrassment of his father, who never should have slept with such a woman.
So above all, he couldn’t just confess about the dream—his father might understand, but the moment it got to a servant’s ears, there was no telling where the news would go next or how it would take new shape. He could plead for understanding, that he never had had any sorcery about him, not once in his life, nor wanted any, and he could say that Gran must be desperate to have Sent that dream. He could hope that his father, who had known Lord Tristen himself, would look on the matter with complete sympathy— and overlook the horse, and Paisi’s going off. They had been lucky about their misdeed. He might argue they had been under a compulsion—he knew from Paisi’s stories and Gran’s that sometimes, when wizardry or magic was working, things couldn’t be helped falling into place, and even people who ordinarily didn’t have a smidge of wizardry might just go along with things, cooperating more slowly than some, but move they might, not thinking as clearly as they might.
And now the stableboy might be beaten, and the priests might get wind of his having heard Gran and remember, if they had ever forgotten, who the king’s bastard’s mother was. And he still had to ask Aewyn about the red coat, and ask if that was right, and now it was all tangled together. He couldn’t lie to Aewyn and ask for his help at the same time.
Luck, when it ran so strongly and so suddenly, could be bad luck as well as good: it could be sorcery as well as wizardry. It could even be magic, which he didn’t understand, except that it was Sihhë-born, Sihhë-made, and sometimes inherent in things, and a foolish boy could pick up something with magic about it and have very little choice or sense about what he did next. He might not be making it up about a compulsion.
He hadn’t acquired anything he could blame for his folly, had he; and he had assumed the dream had come from Gran…
That was the problem. He and Paisi had assumed it came from Gran, when his mother sat there in Henas’amef in her tower, silent through all his life.
But his mother’s son had been called away to his father’s palace, and his mother hated his father, did she not? She hated him beyond all measure, and all the magic that bound her to her tower prison had kept her spells inside. They had never been able to get out. Gran said they couldn’t: Gran said that it wasn’t her witch-work that kept his mother in her prison, but Lord Tristen himself, with magic no wizard or sorcerer could bend, let alone break.
That was what Gran had assured him when, after the earliest visit to his mother he could remember, he had had nightmares, terrible nightmares of her breaking out of her prison and turning up outside their window, in the dark.
She could not get out, Gran had assured him. “Not her nor her wishes, neither.”
And was that not still true?
If his mother found out he had gone to his father, and if she grew very, very angry… who knew what strength she might find?
It became more and more urgent to tell his father, and to get an older, wiser head to work on the matter. Aewyn would, he had said it to Paisi, likely sleep until noon. And maybe he didn’t even want to see Aewyn yet. He had to find the right time to tell his father and make sure no one heard… not easy, to gain a completely private audience with the king of all Ylesuin, but he had to try. And meanwhile if bad luck started showering around him, he would know it was his mother; and if good, then he would be more hopeful that it was Gran’s work: that was one clue he might have to the origin of it.
The best thing to do, in any event, was take care to have a clear head and a calm heart, to tell the truth where it did good, and to say nothing to anyone at all until he could reach the king.
First was to satisfy the hunger pangs and settle himself to live alone. Paisi might be on the road with their breakfast, but there was a pitcher of drinking water in the bedchamber, and Paisi had left behind the food they had in the room for simple moments of hunger. There was a stale end of bread from two days ago, though the sausage he had thought was there, was not. There was the fireplace poker, in the absence of a toasting stick.
He wiped down the poker, skewered a stale bit of bread, showering crumbs on the hearth. The toasted bread revived itself, there was indeed water in the pitcher, and it made a fine, even homey breakfast, making his thoughts happier, for the moment. He was warm and dry, he had found his breakfast, and ill seemed at least a little further removed from the day’s doings. Afterward he sat waiting, holding on to the three-coin luck piece that Gran had blessed and watching the snow come past the windows.
Paisi must be beyond Guelemara’s farms soon. He would be chatting with the merchant as they went, finding out all the gossip—Paisi was good at that—and tonight Paisi would be warm and safe by a fire, helping with the mules. Feiny would be warm and safe, too, with other creatures about, if he would only get along with the mules.
And when Paisi did get home, he would see that Gran had what she needed, and cook her meals, and renew the indoor wood stack, just about in time for the Bryalt festival to start, with its dances and its feasts and all the merriment in town. Paisi deserved that. Lord Crissand was a kind lord, who would understand perfectly well why Paisi would have come home, and he would, by the king’s own order, see that Gran had everything she needed before Paisi rode back again.
He could, perhaps, tell his father that Paisi had been so homesick for the Bryalt holidays he had sent him home. That would save him having to admit to the dream.
He could say that Paisi and he both had grown very worried for Gran, considering the storms this last several weeks, and that they had not been sure they had left enough wood, and they had not wanted to bother the king or have soldiers going out to do what they should have done in the first place: the first was almost the truth, and the second fact was that Gran would never tell the truth to soldiers. Paisi was right. She would meet them at the door and say there was nothing she needed, no matter what.
Blaming it all on their worry about the weather might be a very good lie, maybe even a white lie, since it would protect everyone from blame and even save the king his father from having the priests all in a flutter. It wasn’t that bad a lie.
And Paisi had only come along with him to Guelemara in the first place to take care of him, and he had never been forbidden to send Paisi back— because no one ever thought he would be sending Paisi anywhere else, he was sure, but it was so. The horse, now, being his—he could argue that he thought the horse was his to send, though it was unlikely his father meant him to keep so fine a creature when he did go home again.