"They probably saw you as wicked for trying to stop them," Selatre said.
"So they did," Gerin said. "Which didn't mean I didn't judge them wicked, or that they didn't need stopping."
"And you stopped them," Selatre said, nodding. "Did I rightly hear that you slew Wolfar in the library?" She gave him a different sort of sidelong look this time, as if to say that was not the proper use to which to put a chamber dedicated to preserving books.
"If I hadn't killed him there, he certainly would have killed me," Gerin answered. "That he didn't wasn't for lack of trying." His neck throbbed at the memory; Wolfar had come within an eyelash of strangling him. But he had strangled Wolfar, and in so doing won what passed for Schild's loyalty.
Selatre said, "If you hadn't slain him then, I probably wouldn't be alive today—the monsters would have caught me the day of the earthquake." Her laugh came shaky. "Strange to think your own being depends on something that had happened years ago to someone you didn't know then."
"Aye, that is a curious thought," Gerin agreed. "Some Trokmê—or maybe more than one of the woodsrunners; I've never known for certain—twisted my life out of the path I'd planned for it when he—they—killed my father and my brother and left me baron of Fox Keep. If you dwell on the might-have-beens, it's like wandering through a maze."
"Might-have-beens strain even the powers of the gods," Selatre said. "Remember how Biton had to strain to see what might come from my going back to Ikos and my staying here with you?"
"I'm not likely to forget it," Gerin said with feeling. "I thought I'd lost you forever."
"Biton was kindly, perhaps in memory of how I'd served him before," Selatre answered. "But even if he hadn't been, how could you hope to set your will against a god's?"
"I couldn't," Gerin said, and let it go at that. The god's will had not been his principal concern; Selatre's had. With a lifetime devoted to Biton and bare days to him, she was only too likely to have chosen to return to what she'd always known. That she hadn't left made him grateful every time he looked at her. Most seriously, he said, "I'll do my best to make sure you're never sorry about your choice."
"You needn't worry about that," Selatre said. "The farseeing one will have made his own selection by now; with the temple at Ikos restored, he would not leave it without a Sibyl. I'm here because I wanted to be, and not because I have no other choice open to me."
Again Gerin kept part of his thoughts to himself. There was always another choice: the one Elise had taken. What he had to do now—what he had to do forever—was to make sure Selatre was too content at Fox Keep ever to want to leave it.
He hugged her again, but didn't think, as he had a little while before, of taking her up to his chamber and barring the door. Simple affection had its place, too. Maybe after all he could say some of what he'd thought: "If we work at it, it will turn out all right."
"Are you making prophecies now?" Selatre asked. "Perhaps I should have worried about whether Biton would take you back to Ikos and set you on the throne of pearl."
"Thank you, no," Gerin said. "I'm right where I belong, not doing what I'd hoped to be doing, maybe, but doing something that needs doing—and I'm just happy you think you belong here, too."
"That I do," Selatre agreed. "And now, if you're not going to drag me upstairs, I'll go up by myself and wade through that scroll on Kizzuwatnan hepatomancy I was trying to make sense of the other day."
"That one doesn't make much sense to me, either," Gerin said. "My guess is that it either didn't make much sense to the Sithonian who wrote it in the first place or to the Elabonian who put it into our language. I've tried foretelling a few times from livers of cows or sheep we've slaughtered, but what I divined had nothing to do with what ended up happening. Something's been lost somewhere, I think."
"Maybe it will come clear if I keep studying it," Selatre said, and headed back into the great hall.
Gerin smiled as he watched her go. Though she didn't put it the way he had, she also believed in working at something till you got it right. Even without hepatomancy, he knew a good omen when he saw one.
The way she'd teased him about dragging her upstairs he took for a good omen, too. With Elise, anything involving the bedchamber had been a deadly serious business. With Fand, he'd never known whether he was in for a grand time or a fight. Making love with someone neither earnest nor inflammatory was new to him, but he liked it.
Drifting after Selatre, he walked into the great hall himself. Van sat at one of the tables there, a roast chicken—mostly bones now—in front of him, a pitcher of ale within easy reach. He nodded to the Fox and said, "Grab yourself a jack, Captain, and help me get to the bottom of this."
"I don't mind if I do." Gerin sat down across from the outlander, who poured him a full jack.
Van raised his own and said, "To the Prince of the North—maybe one day to the King of the North!" He poured the ale down his throat, then stared sharply at Gerin. "You'd better drink to that."
"So I should," Gerin said, and obediently drank. He smacked his lips, partly tasting the ale, partly Van's words. King of the North? "If I'm lucky, my grandson may wear that title."
Van plucked at his beard. "I don't know, Fox. All's topsy-turvy here, and you're a young man yet. If you live, you may do it."
Gerin shifted uncomfortably on the bench, as if he'd got a splinter in his backside. "I don't know that I want to do it. A title like that . . . It'd be an open invitation to all the other lords in the northlands to gang together and pull me down."
"I don't know," Van repeated. "Me, I don't think Aragis would lift a finger against you, for fear you'd call down the gods and turn him into a lump of cheese, or some such. Same with Adiatunnus. And without them, who'd raise a proper fight?"
"They're wary of me now, aye," Gerin said, "but that'll fade by the time the first snow falls. I can't make myself king before then; I'm too weak. And taking the title when I haven't the strength to back it up—" He shook his head. "Aragis wants to be king. I think he'd fight for pride's sake if I went and put on a crown."
"Have it your way—you generally do," Van said. "From where I sit, looks like you could bring it off." He poured the last of the ale into his jack, drained it, got up, and headed for the stairs.
He'd left one of the wings on the roast fowl uneaten. Gerin pulled it off the carcass, gnawed on it thoughtfully. He shook his head after a little while, still convinced he was right. All the same, he sent a resentful look toward the stairway: Van had kindled his ambition, and he'd known just what he was doing, too.
"Not yet," Gerin said. His lands had suffered too much from the monsters, and from the fights with Adiatunnus. He wanted time to wed Selatre and to enjoy life with her (though the calculating part of his mind said being married to the former Sibyl of an Ikos now miraculously restored would also foster his prestige among his neighbors). No, not yet.
But who could say? The time might come.
Maps
THE END