Meanwhile the earls were all astir to know the meaning of it, and anxious to see the lord of Ivanor and hear from his own lips the doings in the Guelen court, as they called it. So it was Cevulirn’s door they beset, one visitor and another, all of which Tristen knew, and none of which he prevented.

It left him oddly free of petitioners and questions, so that he quietly fed the pigeons that came to his window, and even had leisure to watch their antics for a time, their pressing and shoving one another, the silly waddle about the ledge when they were sated. Their wings had quite cleared the snow from the ledge in that area, and the place below was only the courtyard, which was free of hazard and remarkably clear.

Boys ran and flung snowballs where lately men had battled and murder had been done, against that very wall.

How careless they were, he thought; with what lightness of heart they stalked one another and arranged their ambushes, and how sorrowful that later age filled their hands with iron. They were innocent, and thought it all a matter for laughter.

Through their midst, however, came a dark and purposeful figure, in a course from the South Gate toward the main doors. An angry man, Tristen thought, and recognized the cloaked and bundled portliness of His Reverence of the Quinalt as snowballs flew perilously close and spattered across the track just behind the man, prankish disregard of priestly authority.

It could not have sweetened the man’s mood.

He had the least but growing premonition the matter would reach him. He could think of no excuse to avoid it, and no one to whom the patriarch of the Quinalt might apply in such anger but to him.

And within a very little time, indeed, he received word from Tassand that His Reverence had lodged a protest with the provost and with the guard, and called for the arrest not of the boys with the snowballs, but of certain women in the market.

He knew what it was, then, and surmised even that the small, furtive shaft he had launched in that direction had not gone unremarked by the priests. At very least he had released a prisoner of the Guelen Guard, he had known he left men discontent at his back; and Guelenmen discontent and now a Guelen priest manifestly angry and lodging charges against old women in the market did assume a certain strange relationship in his thoughts.

And dared he forget the rumors Uwen said were running the town? The priest seemed to have said nothing about witches and storms or the lord of Ivanor, only old women and trinkets.

“Tell Emuin,” he said, for Idrys in his leaving Guelemara had warned him about priests, and advised him to cultivate their favor with gifts. He had made the gifts. He still had an angry priest on his doorstep… and Emuin was, if somehow not a priest, at least a sort of one, among the Teranthine. By his own preference he would wish to draw in the Bryalt clergy as well, for the sake of having yet one more priestly opinion to spread thin the Quinalt sense of absolute power and right to command everyone. He was not sure Emuin would come, in point of fact, but no Bryaltine had been near the guard last night; Emuin had, and he wished he had made the summons more absolute and more urgent. Uwen was out and about the duties of the garrison, something to do with the armory, and he was otherwise alone, but for Lusin and his guard.

So Tassand sped, and dispatched word downstairs to His Reverence of the Quinalt that there would be an audience as he petitioned, and went himself to advise Emuin he was urgently requested.

Meanwhile Tristen called one of the younger servants and decided on ducal finery… not so much that he cared to appear in splendor, as that he wished to allow Tassand the time it took to rouse Emuin out… likely from sleep, for the old man waked more of nights than by day, and kept his hours topsy-turvy of habit. In consideration of the priest, he chose not the black of Ynefel, but his new coat, Amefin red—his only such coat, as happened, but he counted it wise not to receive the Quinalt bearing the colors and symbols of a Sihhë lordship he well knew were anathema to the Quinalt.

And at his own pace and hoping for Emuin’s swift arrival, he came downstairs with Uwen, to the little audience hall, the old one, where servants had lit candles. It had been cold when Cefwyn had it and it was cold now, where the patriarch waited in his outdoor cloak, tucked up like an angry winter sparrow. To Tristen’s great relief Emuin had arrived in greater haste than he had shown for any business since his arrival in Amefel, appearing in spotless gray robes and orderly, except the wind had caught his white-streaked hair and had it standing wispily on end.

“Your Grace,” said the patriarch in no good cheer.

Tristen walked to the ducal throne and sat down. “Sir.”

“I have come from the market.”

“I am aware, sir. And from the provost and with a complaint of some nature regarding women in the market.”

That might have cut short half an hour’s oration. At least having his business set in sum caused the patriarch’s mouth to open and shut and reset itself, while Emuin tucked his hands in his wide sleeves and looked for all the world like an owl roused by daylight.

“Your Grace, Your Grace, not merelyold women, but a danger to the town, and I pray Your Grace’s sober attention to this matter. These otherwise laughable trinket-sellers are out openly in the square in daylight, with forbidden goods, flouting His Majesty’s law and canon law alike, and selling poisons and other noxious powders in the open. I ask Your Grace order the provost to act on it forthwith.”

“Poisons,” he said. He had expected nothing of poisons.

—So do I sell them, said Emuin quietly, for rats and mice, given the snows do drive the creatures out of the fields and into granaries. They’re generally better than charms, even mine.

“I have come here in all seriousness, Your Grace, expecting a hearing from a man reputed the friend of His Majesty!”

“I am listening, sir.” It was, in fact, a small lapse he had committed, in wondering, and master Emuin in answering. He saw a peril in seeming distracted; but he had no intention of arresting the grandmothers with their small traffic: if there were magic, it was nothing that afflicted anyone that he could tell.

“These women, Your Grace, generally they are women of dubious station and practice…”

“Widows,” said Emuin. “Earning a small living from herbs and cures, and the poisoning of rats.”

“If it please you,” the patriarch said sharply, “allow me to speak in my turn and you in yours, brother cleric.”

“I take your reproof,” Emuin said, hand on the Teranthine sigil which hung in view on his breast. He made a respectful little bow, or half of one. “Pray inform His Grace about the poisons. He has no knowledge of rat-killing.”

“For rats or whatever they be!” the patriarch said in great vexation. “The good gods know how they’re commonly used, to rid wives of unwanted husbands, or granaries of mice. Mice are not in question here. Witchcraft is.”

It had been fair weather in Henas’amef, given the cold. The trinket-sellers he had seen in his limited faring out in the town braved the cold in far thinner cloaks than His Reverence wore for this room. And His Reverence had walked down the hill the morning after he had set Paisi at liberty. That coincidence seemed less strange beneath than on the surface of matters.

“Wizardry is not forbidden, either by king’s law or by the gods’ law,” Emuin said. “Your Reverence mistakes the law.”

“We speak here of witchcraft, of sorcery…”

“Witchcraft and wizardry are one; it’s Guelenfolk, not wizards, who’ve made that division, and the king will support me in it, I well know the law and the rule of my order, Your Reverence: trust that I and my order know whereof we speak. And sorcery? These pitiful women couldn’t raise a sot from his slumbers, let alone master a shadow of any potency.”