“The guardroom.”

“The cell. We should go there.”

“Of course,” Emuin said with a fey desperation. “Of course we must, and gods save us all, young lord, what are we looking for?”

“A thief,” he said, not knowing why he thought so, for it did not regard Mauryl’s letters, and that search. He was sure of that. He rose from an unfinished supper, still gazing at the dragon, but able to look away now, from moment to moment, aware that he had in Lord Cevulirn a man who had been many days on the road and who could well do with that supper that to him had turned cold and unimportant. “I beg you stay, sir, enjoy your meal. This regards a very small thing I must attend, no present danger, nothing that will keep me long, I think. I’ll come back when I’m done, and we’ll share a cup before bed.”

Social graces, social words, such as he had heard others make. But he had told the truth. He knew, at least, that the summons was brief, and that someone essential, someone looked-for, waited for him in that cell.

Chapter 5

Yes, m’lord,” was the word from the Amefin guard… Ness, the man’s name was. Ness had followed them unbidden from his post, his comrade left to stand guard above. “M’lord, Selmwy and I found ’im, only on account o’ the Guelenmen we lost ’im… so’s by Your Grace’s order I got the keys back.”

What Ness said made no particular sense to Tristen, and echoed off the walls of the small area outside the few cells the same way Ness’s voice had echoed to him a certain night this early summer, that night when he himself, a prisoner, had sat in the endmost cell battered and bruised and sadly bewildered.

Then he had been afraid of Ness, and of this place. Now the tables were altogether turned, and Ness, fearing him, protested something done or not done by the Guelen Guard, and hoped his lord would forgive the confusion.

Forgiveness was easy. Forgiveness meant simply putting from his thoughts all anger toward Ness, who had never been a bad man, only a hasty one, and who had thought on that day last summer he was protecting the prince from thieves and assassins. Now Ness had brought down the keys, which he had fought over with the Guelens in the hall above, and in trembling haste opened the door to show him the object of contention between the two guard companies.

Uwen, practical man, had brought the lantern down from upstairs, a shielded light reliable in the gusts that swept these stairs. Meanwhile, still indignant, robbed of keys and charge, a Guelen guard had followed Uwen down the steps to watch the proceedings.

It was a jealous battle of authorities, and within it all, Lusin and Syllan had posted themselves upstairs, household officers, deliberately standing between the Guelen Guard, king’s men, and the Amefin gate-guard, duke’s men, who had claimed the royal prisoner and written him down as theirs. Emuin had stayed above with the opposed guardsmen, too, declaring it too much of a crowd on the narrow stairs.

In fact the squabble of guards and authorities like pigeons over a morsel of bread, and all of them so earnest, began to be a comedy… or would have been so, except for the wizard-feeling trembling in the air, and the fact that, jests and foolishness aside, the young man in this cell was in peril of his life.

The door opened into dark and showed them the morsel in question… a small lump of knees and elbows in the light of the lantern Uwen held high. The lump moved… a boy who hid his face and squinted at the light, then, vision obtained between knee and elbows, let out a startlingly pitiful sound and attempted to be completely invisible. Terror lanced through the gray space, and Tristen drew in a sharp breath and forbade the boy that invisibility, on all levels.

“Be still!” he said, and now he knew why he had bidden his guard gather this boy along with all the missing staff. Wizard-gift was in him.

“M’lord!” the waif cried and flung himself on his face in the dirty straw, and there all things stopped, in the gray space and in this place that stank with a remembered stench, and that held all the terror he himself had felt here.

“Paisi,” Tristen said more gently. “Paisi is your name.”

“No, no, m’lord, ’at’s somebody else.”

“Look up. Look at me.”

Emuin should have come down, Tristen thought now, because the wizard-feeling rattled off the walls. But then, Emuin hardly needed to, for he wasthere, having an ear to the gray place, reserving himself from the gusts of fear and alarm that blew wildly about the cell.

In Amefin blood, the Guelenfolk said, was no little amount of the Sihhë. And he would not be surprised, in better light, and if the lad would look up at all at the lantern, if Paisi’s eyes were gray as old glass.

“Paisi,” he said again. “Never hide from me.” Had not Mauryl said something of the sort to him, once?

And indeed the boy did venture half a look, furtive and fearful.

“See, you’re not harmed. You’re not to beharmed.”

Terror still flooded forth, and defense, angry defense, but not denial.

“Boy,” Uwen said, at his shoulder, a slow and tolerant voice, “your new lord’s been huntin’ ye high and low for a fortnight, an’ set some great store by findin’ ye, so’s ye might as well bring your head up an’ face ’im as near like a good, respectable lad as ye can manage. Get up, an’ make a proper respect to His Grace. Ye’re half a man… be all o’ one.”

The youth, stung, did get to his feet, but kept his back against his corner, as if the wall was safety, or needful support.

“What’s the charge again’ ’im, exactly?” Uwen asked with a glance over his shoulder at Ness. They had heard a confused account of theft, above, but Uwen asked particulars.

“Pilferage from m’lord’s wagons,” Ness said.

“A thief,” Tristen said, recalling his impression above.

“A hungry boy, m’lord,” Ness said, bravely. “Bein’ afraid to come to the gate where he usually got a bit o’ bread an’ a meal or two off the kitchen leavin’s, an’ carry messages for the guard. We ain’t seen ’im since the order went out to find ’im.”

“And he guides strangers, do you, Paisi?”

“M’lord,” was all the boy was willing to say, and the fear in the gray space was overwhelming.

“They been chasin’ ’im all the day. An’ was in the way o’ hangin’ ’im,” Ness said. “For theft o’ personal goods.”

“They will not hang him,” Tristen said. He had seen men hang, and had no desire to see this boy meet such a fate. “Not this boy, and no one else, will they hang. If there are thieves or hungry folk, send them to me.”

“M’lord,” Ness said faintly and fearfully, acknowledging the order.

Paisi, too, stared at him with the same wide-eyed look the young villagers in Guelessar had had, burning curiosity and stark fear commingled. It was a summer and a fall since they had looked at one another, and Tristen was not sure he would have recognized Paisi by the look alone… a boy, of what years Tristen had no idea how to reckon by looking at him. But this was indeed the boy who had found him wandering in the streets of the town and guided him to Cefwyn, and now he knew it was no happenstance that had drawn Paisi to him, though neither of them had known it then. Ness had been there. And surely Ness remembered.

“How old might you be?” he asked Paisi: nearly, but not quite a man, was the reckoning his eye made, and Paisi himself only shrugged as if that, like other things, escaped him.

“Little as fourteen, much as sixteen winters,” Uwen said in the subject’s silence. “An’ he don’t have proper manners for ye to bring ’im into a fine house, m’lord. ’E might do well in the guard if he learnt to stand an’ look at a man.”

What shouldhe do with the boy now he had found him? He had never yet reckoned that part of his search. It had only mattered to him to know where Paisi was, and to know that he was close to him and could not fall into the hands of anyone else. He had added Paisi to his list of those souls he wanted found, and found for the same reasons as he would secure wards and latch windows, gathering the power of the household close in one place, not scattering it abroad, available to any ill intention that wandered in from Elwynor.