He moved to consolidate the gain. “Alas!” cried Shalhassan. “My daughter, it seems has the advantage over us all. If a wager has been won today, it has been won by her.” And with Bashrai quick to aid, he doffed his own cloak, ignoring the bite of wind, and walked over to lay it at his daughter’s feet.
Precisely in step beside him, neither before nor behind, was Diarmuid of Brennin. Together they knelt, and when they rose the two great cloaks, the dark one and the white, lay in the snow before her and the thronged square echoed to her name.
Shalhassan made his eyes as kind as he could, that she might know he was, for the moment, pleased. She was not looking at him.
“I thought I had saved you a cloak,” she said to Diarmuid.
“You did. How should I better use it than as a gift?” There was something very strange in his eyes.
“Is gallantry adequate compensation for incompetence?” Sharra queried sweetly. “You are responsible for the south, are you not?”
“As my brother’s expression should tell you,” he agreed gravely.
“Has he not cause to be displeased?” Sharra asked, pressing her advantage.
“Perhaps,” the Prince replied, almost absently. There was a silence: something very strange. And then just before he spoke again it flashed maliciously in his blue eyes and, a pit yawning before them, father and daughter both saw a hilarity he could no longer hold in check.
“Averren,” said Diarmuid. All eyes turned to where another figure detached itself from the four remaining riders from Seresh. This one, too, removed a cap, revealing short copper-colored hair. “Report,” said Diarmuid, his voice carefully neutral.
“Yes, my lord. When word came that the army of Cathal was moving west, I sent word to you from South Keep, as instructed. Also as instructed, I went west myself to Seresh and crossed yesterday evening to Cynan. I waited there until the army arrived and then, in Cathalian colors, I sought out the Princess. I saw her bribe a bargeman to take her across that night and I did the same.”
“Wasting my money,” said the Prince. There was utter silence in the square. “Go on.”
Averren cleared his throat. “I wanted to find out the going rate, my lord. Er… in Seresh I picked up her trail without difficulty. I almost lost her this morning, but ah… followed your surmise, my lord Prince, and found her in the colors of Seresh waiting with the guards. I spoke with Duke Niavin and later with the other three guards, and we simply rode with her in front of the army all day, my lord. As instructed.”
After silence, sound. Sound of a name cried on rising note after rising note to reach a crescendo so high it bade fair to break through the vaults of sky above and earth below, that Mórnir and Dana both might hear how Brennin loved its brilliant laughing Prince.
Shalhassan, calculating furiously, salvaged one meager crumb of nurture from the ashes of the afternoon: they had known all along, but if that was bad it was a comprehensible thing and better that it had been done this way than in two hours, utterly without warning. That was—would have been—simply too formidable.
Then he chanced to see Aileron’s face, and even as he mentally added another score to Diarmuid’s tally for the day, he felt his one crumb turn to ash as well. It was abundantly clear from the High King’s expression—Aileron hadn’t known any of this.
Diarmuid was looking at Sharra, his own expression benign. “I told you the cloak was a gift, not a wager lost.”
Her color high, she asked, “Why did you do it that way? Why pretend not to know?”
And laughing suddenly, Diarmuid replied, “Utter frivolity,” in a passable imitation of his brother. Then, laughing still, he turned to face the black expression, very close to a killing look, in the High King’s eyes. It was perhaps more than he had expected. Slowly the laughter faded from his eyes. At least it was gone, Shalhassan thought wryly, though he himself had not wiped it away. The cheering was still going on.
Aileron said, “You knew all along.” It was not a question.
“Yes,” said Diarmuid simply. “We do things differently. You had your charts and plans.”
“You didn’t tell me, though.”
Diarmuid’s eyes were wide and there was a questing in them and, if one knew what to look for, a long desire. Of all the people in that square, only Kevin Laine, watching from among the crowd, had seen that look before, and he was too far away this time. The Prince’s voice was even, if very low, as he said, “How else would you have ever known? How else would you have been able to put your planning to the test? I expected you to succeed, brother. We had it both ways.”
A long silence. Too long, as Aileron’s heavy-lidded gaze remained bleakly on his brother’s face. The cheering had run itself down. A moment passed. Another. A stir of cold, cold wind.
“Brightly woven, Diar,” Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile.
They began to move inside. Both ways, Shalhassan was thinking bemusedly. They knew all along and they had prepared in two hours. What sort of men were these two sons of Ailell?
“Be grateful,” came a voice at his side. “They are ours.” He turned and received a golden wink from a lios alfar and a grin from Brock, the Dwarf next to him. Before he knew what he was doing, Shalhassan smiled.
Paul had wanted to waylay the Priestess immediately, but she was ahead of him in the procession and turned to the left as soon as she passed through the great doors of the palace, and he lost sight of her in the crowded entranceway. Then, as he fought to get free and follow, Kevin came up and he had to stop.
“He was brilliant, wasn’t he?” Kevin grinned.
“Diarmuid? Yes, very.” Paul rose on tiptoe to try to see over the people milling about them. There was a banquet being readied; servants and courtiers jostled each other as they crisscrossed the vestibule. He saw Gorlaes, the handsome Chancellor, taking charge of the party from Cathal, which now included, unexpectedly, a Princess.
“You’re not listening,” Kevin said.
“Oh. What?” Paul drew a breath. “Sorry. Try me again.” He managed a smile.
Kevin gave him a searching glance. “You okay? After last night?”
“I’m fine. I walked a lot. What were you saying?”
Again Kevin hesitated, though with a different, more vulnerable expression. “Just that Diarmuid’s riding off within the hour to fetch this shaman from the Dalrei. Dave’s going and I am too. Do you want to come?”
And how did one explain how dearly one wanted to come? To come and savor, even amid war, the richness of companionship and the laughter that the Prince and Kevin both knew how to engender. How explain, even if he had the time?
“Can’t, Kev. I’ve too much to do here.”
“Umm. Right. Can I help?”
“Not yet. Maybe later.”
“Fine,” Kevin said, feigning a casualness. “We’ll be back in three or four days.”
Paul saw red hair through an archway. “Good,” he said to his closest friend. “Take care.” There should have been more, he thought, but he couldn’t be everything; he wasn’t even sure what, exactly, he could be.
He squeezed Kevin on the shoulder and moved off quickly to intercept Jaelle, cutting through the eddying crowd. He didn’t look back; Kevin’s expression, he knew, would have forced him to stop and explain, and he didn’t feel up to explaining how deeply fear lay upon him.
Halfway across the floor he saw, with a shock, that Jennifer was with the Priestess. Schooling his features, he came up to them.
“I need you both,” he said.