“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.
“Aewyn?” his father asked, and rose to his feet—not startled, no. Upset.
Aewyn went at the matter in his father’s own way—head-on. “Where’s Otter?”
“In his rooms, one would have thought.”
Aewyn shook his head. “He’s not. He’s heard. I’ve heard. He got a message from his gran by way of the Lord Commander. And you had already arranged the Guard to go with him in the dead of night, without seeing me! Why did you not tell me, Father?”
His father turned to the Lord Chancellor.
“My lord king,” the Lord Chancellor said, excusing himself, and Aewyn clamped his lips together and said not a word until witnesses, even the guards, had passed outside the doors.
Alone, his father stared at him until it occurred to him that he would lose, in any test of wills. It was his part to bow his head, unclench his jaw, however difficult, and adopt a milder tone.
“Why was I not informed?” Aewyn asked again, trembling with outrage.
“Where is he?”
“Not in his rooms. The fire’s still burning, but he’s not there. Neither is Brother Fool.”
“He was to leave,” his father said, ignoring the epithet. “Tomorrow. I’ve told the stables to notify the Guard if your brother should try to leave. I was going to speak to him tonight. Or earlier, if he appeared. I was going to send him off with a proper escort, all the help he and his gran could want.” His father drew a deep breath and his brows knit. “There was a message.”
“I read it.”
“It was a lie,” his father said. “Or at least, it was intended to give him an excuse.”
“You did it!”
“I fear I did.”
“Then he’s taken off to help her, and it’s a lie?”
“He won’t have gotten a horse. Or passed the gates. The Guard will bring him back.”
“He’ll have walked out. He’ll have taken Paisi’s horse. He’s out there, in the snow.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if he couldn’t get a horse at the stables, he knows where Paisi’s is, and he was going to ride him to the lodge.”
“What does the lodge have to do with this?”,
“We were going there, and he was going to ride Paisi’s horse, but I said you’d get him a better. But if he’s gone home, and not asked anyone, then he’s gone down and taken Paisi’s horse from the pasture.”
“Where will he have a saddle?”
“He couldn’t get one.”
“The boy can’t ride!”
“If he has to, he will,” Aewyn declared. He had not a doubt in the world. “He’d do it, for his gran. He loves her. And he’s not here! Father, how could you?”
His father sank into his chair. He looked tired and downhearted. “It wasn’t my best plan. Damn the luck, sit down. No, sit, I say! If you break into men’s councils, be ready to hear things that may displease you. There was no message. No real one, at least.”
“Then why is the Lord Commander—” he began to ask, but his father lifted a hand.
“Hush. Hush and listen. There is serious trouble. There is trouble in the Quinahine, beyond the matter of the spilled incense.”
“It was all cleaned up. And that wasn’t his fault!”
“It was not all cleaned up. Beyond it, I say. Marks remain, which some can see. I can’t. You can’t—I trust you can’t.”
“I don’t think so.”
“To your uncle’s eyes, and to your mother’s, and to Otter’s, I’m sure, the spot persists. It reappeared, on the new stone. And trouble is rising. Rumors. Accusations of sorcery that sit very ill. The Bryaltines are generally a peaceful sect, but the years since the war have brought a certain militancy to part of the sect, that which roots itself in Elwynor… in your mother’s kingdom. Hostilities breaking out between Bryalt and Quinalt in Guelessar is not a good thing for the treaty, for you, and most especially for your mother and your baby sister in any visit this spring. Do you understand me in this?”
“I understand about the Bryaltines. But that’s not Otter’s doing.”
“Most firmly it is not. But the manifestations are visible to your uncle— which, indeed, you are not to say, boy!”
“No, sir.” He was troubled. He knew his uncle was saintly and devout, and had a voice in the Quinaltine, and moved the priests when others couldn’t. He knew his mother saw things. “But what if there is a spot?”
“It’s not that. It’s an imperfection. A sign. There are haunts within the Quinaltine.”