So, with a document, an oath, and a blessing, he was lord of a province, and with his banners flying in full view of Guelemara he was riding away to a place he had regretted leaving in the first place. If only it had meant returning to an Amefel preserved in time, an Amefel the way it had been, with Cefwyn free and themselves in all the company they had had there, he would have been deliriously happy.

But the world had changed since summer, in far more than the fall of leaves. He had asked what winter would bring, and now with a nip in the air despite the sunshine, he saw it bringing change, change, and change, himself swept along across dirty cobbles and past doors still adorned with.autumn garlands, moving toward another season of doubt, and hoping for reunion in the spring, on a battlefield.

One unanticipated, utterly foolish pleasure, however, dawned on him amid all the other assaults on his heart in this short ride down the street: this morning he no longer went in unrelieved black. He had become lord of a color, a banner, an emblem, lord of a living land, with people in it, and cattle and horses and orchards and all manner of things that were not true of Ynefel and Althalen. And, against the brown and gray dying of the trees and the threatened white of winter, he bore no quiet color, either, but red, red darker than the Marhanen scarlet: red of rubies, red of old blood, red of roses at dusk.

So many things a color might be, both good and dreadful; but above all else, as of this morning, his colors and his garments need no longer be the black of Shadows. The king’s own tailor and Dame Margolis, the kindly lady who had done such duty for Cefwyn before in Amefel, had marshaled a sleepy, harried band of tailor’s apprentices last night. Guelesfort servants and even the cloth-seller’s wife, sister, sons, and daughters had turned out, working by lamp and candlelight. They had bled from pricked fingers, the evidence of which was on the last-done fabric of Uwen’s coat; and it was thanks to them that he wore a surcoat of red cloth this morning, with the Amefin Eagle in black on it. It was thanks to them that he had that banner.

And thanks to them and by the king’s grace, red Eagle patches covered the royal Dragon on the man who bore the Amefin standard and who would bear it on their journey… Gedd, his name was, a sergeant of the Guelen Guard, who had fought with distinction at Lewenbrook. Gedd carried the banner of Amefel, and beside him, bearing the banners of Ynefel and Althalen on either hand… those riders were his regular guards, Lusin and Syllan, by the king’s leave and their own choice.

In unforgiving sunlight the coats and patches of all his guard were a slight mismatch: it was the king’s bright Marhanen scarlet with the black Amefin Eagle in a square of ruby red, and every townsman who saw it must know whose service had lent the guards to Amefel, but he had no doubt Cefwyn intended so.

Most of the men Cefwyn lent him would return, in due time; but his own guards would not. Lusin and Syllan, patching the Amefin Eagle to their coats with their own stitches this morning, had recklessly called the Sihhë Star lucky for them and left the king’s service.

“Better prospects for the likes of us wi’ his lordship,” he had overheard Lusin say. “Fools we ma’ be, but this is a lucky badge for me.”

“Ye ain’t regardin’ the priests, sir?” Syllan had asked, and Lusin laughed in a way that said, no, he did not regard the priests’ warnings.

“The lad ain’t no black wizard,” Syllan said then. “An’ if ye go to his service, I’m wi’ ye, an’ I think the lot of us is in the same mind.”

Hearing that, he had stood there, not knowing whether to admit he had overheard them or not, and finally walked away, hoping his guards would go on in the good luck they believed in, and fearing he could not promise them whatever luck truly meant to them. He knew Luck for a word Men set great store by, and his guards said if a man had lost it, he was in a sad state. But it was a word that never quite Unfolded to him: a word Men used, men like Uwen, who had no power of wizardry or magic at all, and they used it in hopes that all things would chance to their benefit without a wizard arranging it. He suspected that he could wish his guards well and happy to far more effect than they could wish for themselves, and willingly did so as he was riding down with his company to the gates of Guelemara.

But it was fraught with hazard, such a spell. Their going with him set them in harm’s way not only of weapons but of wizards and shadows. He very keenly remembered Lewenbrook, and the young man who had carried his banner onto that field, but not off it. What he wished well, his enemies were most apt to wish ill in any moment of his inattention… and in that thought he was afraid to wish them anything at all. He had all along left them and Uwen as much to their own fates as he could, fearing he knew not what… Hasufin was dead, which was no surety: Idrys said that hewas dead, too, and here he rode down the middle of Gate Street, perhaps far beyond Mauryl’s wishes—or perhaps not.

Now that they had begun this movement, this shifting of power within Ylesuin, the thing had acquired its own momentum, in the king’s orders, Idrys’ orders, Annas’ orders, Emuin’s orders, Uwen’s, Anwyll’s, and his own orders at the last, and it was no less the movement of an army than it had been preceding Lewenbrook: the wagons, as then, had gotten up to the Guelesfort before dawn to load, and the last had gotten down again by the West Gate well before the swearing so they should not impede the processional of the cavalry. The number of wagons and mules and carts, carriages, oxcarts, drivers, artisans and craftsmen, horses and grooms, had been certain almost from the moment one oxcart had been necessary. The oxcart dictated their speed; their speed dictated nights on the road, and those nights dictated all the additional wagons. Alone, with a small troop of the Guard with a change of horses, he could have ridden to Amefel in two days, if he were put to it…

But that was not to be. Annas would none of it, and insisted yes, they must leave in the morning, but they must arrive with all due ceremony, having given due and decent notice to His Majesty’s viceroy—a fair consideration. For the viceroy to maintain his dignity was an important matter; and the viceroy should not be suddenly deposed: the province was restive, prone to rumor, and the appearance of dignity and deliberations in the transfer of authority was essential. There would be a careful exchange of documents and a proclamation read before the people.

Then the viceroy would need, so Annas had proposed, the selfsame carts to carry his own household and his troop of the Guelen Guard home to Guelessar, leaving Amefel with a new duke, blessed and sworn and sealed by the Crown in Guelemara.

That they had been able to accomplish the documents, the ceremony, the gathering-up of a ducal household, the muster of wagons and guard all in only so few hours preparation—indeed, if people wished to fling the word magicabout regarding the lightning bolt, he thought his orderly departure and the appearance of the banners should excite even greater comment. Their only grace was that the Dragon Guard was always ready to move and the heavy carts they needed in such numbers were the carts the Guard had already gathered to move equipment to the riverside for the winter camps, gathering which was the work of days in itself.

Preceding the bawling confusion in the stable-court before dawn and the organized and thunderous turnout of cavalry in the square this morning, everyone in the company had seen a numbing, frenzied succession of hours when any single thing going amiss could have delayed everything. Any small matter had become a contention, an argument, a waving of arms and shouting among his servants, his guards, the king’s servants, the king’s guards. And now that everything was accomplished and they rode through the Old Gate into the lower town he began to draw easier breaths. He passed under the gated arch of the Crown Wall, the citadel’s official limit and the oldest defenses of Guelemara, and said to himself that, lightning stroke and all, things today had gone with far, far more ease than he would expect if some hostile wizardry were still at work.