The king poured a cup, tasted the sweetness, and glanced toward his library. He had a burden of poetry in his heart, a grim, dark mood setting itself into verses that would look like raven’s wings on paper and sound like the voices of murdered men when read. These he had, the words and the will to work them out.

Once in his library, the door closed behind him, and the scent of books and ink and rising sorrow surrounding, Gilthas would lose himself in words. He drew a long breath, hungry for that. He would change from his festival clothing and take these few hours before he must join his Senate in session.

Setting down the wine, he lifted the note from his mother.

Your Majesty,

I had thought we would have another guest at dinner, however as his health at the moment seems uncertain, I have advised the steward not to expect him.

L.

Gil’s heart sank as he recognized the coded message. The guest, of course, was the treaty, its health at the moment uncertain. He read the note again and after the third scan took some hope from between the lines. Uncertain health was not a sentence of death, or so one could hope. Wearily, he tossed the note into the fire and went through to his bed chamber.

There he found Kerian, and he could hardly credit that a woman so shaken by sobbing could weep as silently as she did.

“Kerian!”

Sobbing shook her; she did not lift her head or move in any way to acknowledge that she heard Gil’s voice. The morning’s bright dancer lay like a broken bird, hardly able to move.

“Kerian,” the elf king whispered, lifting her gently into his arms. Gilthas barely caught the scent of the Tarsian perfume that had enchanted him in the morning. She smelled of the city, his city. Her perfumes were the richer scents of the horse fair, warm spice rolls from Baker’s Way, a tang of mint from the garden in which she had danced.

Kerian looked up, her lips bitten to bleeding. She pushed her tangled hair from her face with shaking hands.

“Gil, she’s one of those killed! Lania-she’s been murdered!”

Through the window a breeze drifted, and it carried the sound of the celebrating city. The soft song of a mandolin twined with the laughter of children and the voices of their elders melding into a constant, pleasant hum that would not subside till dawn. The first whiff of wood smoke hung in the air. Tall fires would light the city tonight, a reminder in these genteel precincts of an earthier existence and a time when the elves who cleared spaces in the forest to farm lit up the sky with their hot, high fires to celebrate the seasons of light that had brought them health and harvest and to bid the long days of summer farewell.

Gil held her close. When he felt her calm, he let her go and went out quickly to pour a golden goblet full of ruby wine. She took a sip, then another. He took the goblet from her, and softly he said, “Who is Lania?”

Her tanned cheek flushed, her fists clenched, and the bitten lip bled again. “She was my cousin. Gil, did you see …” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, blood and tears and wine. “Did you see on the eastern bridge?”

Feeling anger again, and shame, Gilthas said, “I did.”

Cold, her voice, like wind from winter. “Did you see my cousin, my lord king? Did you see her with the ravens round her head?”

“Ah, Mishakal’s mercy,” he whispered, feeling powerless. “Kerian, I don’t know how-she wasn’t a robber, surely.”

Color drained from her cheeks, golden tan turned ashen gray. The angry set of her jaw faltered and tears rose again in her eyes.

“No! She was …Lania was my brother’s dearest friend. Gil…”

Gilthas had not seen Kerian’s brother Iydahar in many years, not since before the Chaos War and the time of the disaster that resulted in the death of his mother’s brother Porthios who had been, for a brief and blood-soaked moment, Speaker of the Sun and Stars, king of two elven nations. Upon his apparent death, Gilthas the puppet king had taken the throne.

Iydahar was, Gilthas knew, a proud man of the forest to whom even Qualinesti hunters seemed effete. He abhorred the status of his fellow Kagonesti, had no patience for the word “servant” when “slave” seemed, to him, closer to troth, yet fierce Iydahar had once embraced the cause Por-thios had espoused, the dream that the two elven kingdoms, Qualinesti and Silvanesti, would be joined as one, mat their Wilder Elf kin would be welcome in that broad and beautiful realm. Iydahar had believed with all his wild heart in this cause.

Iydahar had conceived no love for the boy-king who took the prince’s place and turned over the kingdom to a dragon’s Dark Knights. Porthios’s wife, the Silvanesti queen Alhanna, and Silvanos their infant son, had fled Qualinesti. Exiles, they dwelt in wild lands now, forbidden to live in Qualinesti for their part in a failed rebellion, forbidden to return to Silvanesti by the foes they had made there. Gilthas had not seen his lover’s kinsman since then.

Gilthas shuddered. Behind closed eyes he saw again the head of a red-haired woman, her mouth gaped wide, a dark veil of crows gathering round her bloody hair.

“Kerian,” he said. “I’m sorry about your cousin. I know you’re worried about your brother. I am too. I pray Lord Thagol is done now with his -”

Now she did move from him, only a little, but her eyes narrowed. “Done, my lord king?” Color flared in ashen cheeks. “He’s done with Lania, surely.”

She flung up from the bed, and the belled anklet made no sweet sound, only a tinny jangling. In one angry instant, Kerian reached down and yanked it from her ankle, flinging it across the room in almost the same gesture.

Calmly, the elf king said, “Kerian, I will send my men out into the forest to see what they can learn. I will speak to Rashas about Thagol.”

With cool steadiness, Kerian said, “Do you think men of yours will be able to find a Wilder Elf if he doesn’t want to be found? We both know that Thagol has just begun to count heads.”

She stilled. In that instant, standing upon an anciently woven carpet, in the bedchamber of a king who longed to make her his queen, Kerian looked like a wild creature, head up and testing the air. Wilder Elf! He had not seen her so in many years. Her tattoos enchanted him, his lips, his hands loved to trace the shape of them, but he didn’t remember, or not often, that these twining vines signified that his Kerianseray had been born in Ergoth and lived in the upland forests on the foaming sea coasts, wilder places than ever he had visited. They marked her out as a member of the White Osprey Kagonesti, the daughter of the leader of that tribe, the sister of the man who surely led it now.

“Kerian,” said the king, now firmly, “you underestimate my determination. I promise you my men won’t come back till they’ve found safe word about your brother.”

Kerian shook her head. “No matter how careful your men will be, Gil, Iydahar will know they’re coming almost before they leave the city. No.” Her jaw stiffened. “Iydahar is my brother. He is in danger. I must go myself.”

“Kerian, you haven’t seen Iydahar in years. You can’t have any idea where he is.”

Kerian looked at him long. “We know how to reach each other, Gil. There is a village, and there is a tavern. I can go there and leave the right word in the right ear. He will find me, or someone will show me the way to him.”

She said no more, though he waited. At last, into his silence, she said, “My lord king, I will not give away Iyda-har’s secret.”

He answered as her lover, the man who feared for her safety, who could no longer imagine how impoverished his life would be without her. Unfortunately, when he spoke, he sounded like her king.