Sometimes Otter’s schemes were as troubling as his questions. But he also came up with intrigues Aewyn never would have thought of. “Us high folk daren’t get caught doing it. The priests would be very put out. But if we paid the grooms to go get a batch of nice big apples and carrots and such and strew it all through the stalls, nobody would care.”

It was a plot hatching, a plot that required all sorts of delicious connivance. Otter’s ways had never gotten them caught, particularly when he had Paisi’s advice. For a country lad, Otter was very good at figuring out the byways and back ways of the palace—besides their careful mapping. But this was something that, besides theft, required diplomacy, and arrangements, and picking the right people to carry it out, those who would keep a secret.

He knew just the ones.

And, he thought, if they were very clever, there was the big kitchen apple barrel, there were always old flour sacks in the kitchen, and if they sneaked quite skillfully, they needn’t spend a penny of his market money, or have to trust the stable lads to do the buying.

ii

A LITTLE PLAN, WITH AEWYN, ALWAYS ENDED UP FAR BIGGER THAN IT STARTED. Otter was not thoroughly happy: he would rather have put his hand in fire than have to attend Quinalt services, though he had to respect the king’s faith, and he could see that there were advantages to his mother’s son not sitting in his rooms while Guelenfolk were praying and fasting and being pious. But that inconvenience palled in the face of the adventure Aewyn proposed: he was very glad to think they would be feeding the horses—his own among them—and that Aewyn agreed with him. His own stomach was full of good food. He trusted his half brother Aewyn, who, despite his grand notions, never had led them wrong. And his father—in private, he dared think of the king as his father—had made provision for his going to the Quinalt Festival in public with the family. That was at once scary and exciting. He had not been in public with his brother before.

He walked back to his room, a track that led down the hall, across the landing of the great stairs, and farther down the hall four doors, just as the servants were putting out the east wing candles—all but the single candle in each hall sconce, which would burn for safety and for convenience of anyone whose night candle had gone out. The west wing, where Aewyn’s room lay next the king’s and the queen’s chambers, still burned bright with multiple candles, and the sounds of revelry still came up the stairs from the corridor below, where a veritable forest of candles burned bright and numerous. By comparison, with the dimming of the candles in the east wing, the way to his own door began to feel like deepest night, and the sleet rattling at the high windows of the grand stairway at the landing predicted the revelers below might wade knee deep to their lordly houses before morning.

It was a lonely hour, and he had no bodyguard to walk with him: his father had appointed him none, though the captain of his father’s guard had given him the name of the sergeant of the upper hall night guard and orders to go to him if he ever felt uneasy. Aewyn’s bodyguard, likewise, would have walked him home on such late visits, but he never availed himself of what Aewyn had ceased to offer—he could not imagine Guelen guardsmen, the Prince’s Guard more to the point, armored and carrying weapons, walking him down the hall to his room. He had no enemies that he knew, nor any great notoriety, so far as he knew; there were no bogles on the short way, only disconcerting echoes and a fluttering activity of shadows in the dim light, all of which were due to drafts—there was a well-reported and much-deplored draft in the upper hall when certain doors downstairs were open, but he had no idea which ones those were. He was reasonably sure the shadows were the wind fluttering the last candles, and nothing due to haunts—the Guelesfort had nothing of the reputation of the Zeide, down in Amefel.

He was a guest in his father’s house and had no desire to disturb the household, or make demands, or take his welcome for granted. He was Otter, was all, on a visit that would last only as long as he amused his brother, and he would go back to Amefel, probably before too much longer—as soon as he had assured his father he was a quiet soul and without great expectations. He had used to dream of being swept up by his royal father on one of his visits and made a prince, well, at least a landed lord—had not his father provided him an education, and put him under the personal care of Lord Crissand?—but a surer knowledge of the world beyond Gran’s farm had begun to tell him that was not at all likely, and that the reason he was under Lord Crissand’s care had more to do with Lord Crissand’s having his mother in prison.

Going to Festival with the family, now: that was a surprise to him. He had not been sure he would be this long in Guelemara.

He found his own door and whisked inside as if ghosts were on his heels—always, these snug, painted doors chased a little breeze inside, and the doors, easy on their polished hinges, felt snappish and scarily sharp in their closing, fierce things that would love a taste of peasant skin.

“M’lord?” Paisi was waiting up for him—Paisi, Gran’s true grandson, as happened, Gran’s proper heir, a grown man—while he himself was Gran’s ward, a guest even under the roof he called home. Paisi had never settled easily into what he called “lordly doin’s,” and avoided locals—so it was a lonely watch Paisi had assumed, and not uncommon for Otter to find Paisi sitting exactly this way at the fireside, having had his supper alone. It was not to his will that Paisi regularly stayed behind in quarters when he was with Aewyn, but that was what Paisi chose. Paisi oversaw the servants who made free of every door in the Guelesfort—“so’s to see what fancy servants do,” was Paisi’s way of putting it, in his choice to stay much about their rooms. But Paisi, who had been a thief when he was a boy, had his own suspicions of anyone opening drawers—even with the best of excuses and bearing clean linens when they did it.

Paisi was a small wiry man with dark hair and dark eyes, like most Amefin-born—clean-shaven, like most from the west and north. His hands were callused and his face was tanned dark from work in the sun. The habit of good humor was etched around his eyes, lines which the fire smoothed to a look of youth. Country-bred might be an insult in this grand house; but that was Paisi, through and through; and wherever Paisi was, was safe and comfortable, in Otter’s thinking, a little bit of Gran’s house that stayed constantly near him in this strange place.

Paisi rose as Otter unfastened his cloak, and Paisi took it from him, snatching it deftly away, though Otter perfectly well knew for himself where the peg was. Paisi hung his cloak up by the guards’ room, just off the little entry hall, and Otter, ignoring both hearthside chairs, sank down on the warm, smooth, polished stones: nothing escaped the relentless polishing in the Guelesfort.

Paisi sat down by him, cross-legged, picked up the poker, and began to settle the fire down for the night.

“Did you have supper?” Otter asked him, to be sure the servants had come and done their jobs. He was prepared to go down and raid the kitchen with Paisi, well fed as he was: Aewyn’s supper invitation had been unexpected. “I didn’t think I’d be so long.”

“Oh, when ’Is ’Ighness called ye in to supper, I went straight down to kitchen on me own, bein’ a canny fellow.”

A frown. “You’re entitled to call the servants to bring it, you know.”

“Oh, but ’Is Majesty’s banquet’s all spread out down below, and staff gettin’ all the dishes that come back, ain’t they? So the pickin’s is better if I go down meself—I ain’t lived in a great house for nothin’. I’d ha’ brought some tarts up when I come back, but didn’t seem likely there was short commons in ’Is ’Ighness’s rooms, neither, was there?”