Lady Orien did not expect visitors this afternoon. That was evident.

Maids snatched at sewing and scattered, white-faced, from the benches at the solar windows. Orien herself cast aside her lap robe and rose up in a scattering of colored threads.

Orien was not at her best. There was little color in her face, and her clothing was gray, looking old and outworn, a gown chosen for comfort, surely, not show. The red curls were drawn back severely and braided in a long braid. Small bruises marked her left cheek and her chin, marks the source of which Cefwyn did not know, but guessed as possibly one of his guards. She seemed entirely unnerved at his sudden intrusion. Her fine hands locked together as if to stop their movement. But she was never at a loss for argument.

“I should have thought you would pay me some courtesy of announcement, Your Majesty. But, then, you own the guards and doubtless you will make free of my door when you will.”

It was by no means the contrition he had had reported to him. The soft, even voice had little quaver in it; the eyes, none.

I misjudged Heryn to my father’s ruin, he thought. Have I likewise misjudged my act of mercy? It grows late to order other deaths; now it would have the taint of persecution.

“You are safe here,” he said coldly. “Do not presume too much on my patience. You asked to be heard. I am here.”

“I thought it was myself who would be summoned,” she said, and brushed at her gray skirts. “This is all I can do for mourning.” Now, now came the quavering voice. Worse, it did not have the sound of pretense.

“Do I learn now what will be done with me and my sister?”  “What would you ask, Lady Orien?”

Her head came up; her chin lifted. “I would ask, my lord King, for Amefel.”

Her audacity astounded him. He recalled with shame how she had flattered her way into his bed, while she plotted with her brother against his life and against his father’s life. His gullibility appalled him.

“I am Aswydd,” she said. “Like other Aswydds, I can divorce sentiment and policy. Give me Amefel for my holding. I shall mourn my brother and bow to circumstance. It will save Your Majesty division and confusion within the province at a time when Your Majesty has greatest need of unity. And it will prevent contention among other lords as to who may claim the spoils—with all the feuds and history entailed.”  “I need no advice from you or your sister on policy.”

“No, my lord King, since you well know these things to be true.”

What she said made clear sense, but he did not stop hating the woman. “Have what you ask,” he said then, and was gratified that it surprised her. The color quite fled her face and she looked as if she would gladly sit down; but she could not, in the King’s presence, and he did not give her that leave. “Your cousins I shall banish, all, far eastward, stripped of all properties, which I give to you. That will doubtless give them great love for you, Orien Duchess of Amefel, and constant hope of your charity. But extend them none, on pain of death. Your sister Tarien will have no estate. It is yours, and you may not bestow it in your lifetime. You will remain under arrest, Your Grace of Amefel and Henas’amef, until it pleases me to release you. You will be in all particulars.., sole holder of the title.”

“So that there will be no lord to face you in council but myself, and no man to stand for me.”

“Ah, but I shall stand for you. Is it not the ancient custom of Amefel that a man who deprives a lady of her male kin must see to her welfare?

A Crown wardship for you, Your Grace. And Lady Tarien’s wardship and that of your cousins to you. No one will harm you. But I would not have a dozen of my lords competing for your tarnished favors, or have you or your sister politicking between the sheets. When you wed, Your Grace, if ever you know another man—and I shall take a dim view of impropriety—it will be with my approval; and the Aswydds’ rule over Amefel ends with your name, by one means or another. Be assured, you are lord and lady in Amefel.”

Orien’s face had gone quite pale. She made a slow curtsy. “My lord King, —”

“I let you live. I let your sister live. If you were Heryn’s brother, Your Grace, you would fare differently, I assure you. Cross me again and you’ll find no further mercy. That I would execute a woman—never doubt. But your brother swore in dying that you no more than obeyed his orders as lord of Amefel; and therefore you and your sister and your cousins are alive.”

“My lord,” she breathed, and her face was rigid.

“Never grow arrogant, my lady. You will never have any champion for your opinions but myself, and I like them little. Your head is insecurely set and might make pair with your brother’s on the south gate at any moment.”

“I beg my lord King, his body for burial.”

“That I do grant. Neither I nor the ravens have more use for it. But on condition the burial be private and seemly. Yourself, the priests, your sister,.., my soldiers.”

Orien swept another curtsy, slow and deep, showing her breast. He lingered, looking at her, wondering what had ever attracted him to this cold, scheming woman, or why he let her have her life now. The look she gave him was not Heryn’s, but something more direct and more defiant.

“The bloody Marhanens,” she said in a soft voice. “Always extravagant in revenge. I thank my lord King, that I have discovered a gentler nature to moderate your justice.”

The fact of her sex was there again, and mitigated the epithet generally used and seldom dared to the Marhanens’ face. Again a different Orien flashed into memory, pale skin and silks and tumbled hair. Her bruised face offended his sensibilities.

“We have beheaded women before, we Marhanens. Remember that. I shall never trust you. But neither will I persecute you, Lady Orien.”

“My women and I,” she said gravely, “will make prayers of gratitude for that.”

He cast a sharp look at the servants in the shadows of the room-well-born, some might be, even bastard cousins. But two were peasant-looking, darker-haired, of Amefin blood and maybe older, wearing such talismans as Amefin women wore. He looked at Orien, lady of Amefel in more than in his grant, and feared their curses, and witchery.

“Pray rather that my good humor continues,” he said. “Where is your sister?”

“At her own prayers, my lord King. For our brother’s soul. We are a pious people.”

“Horses may fly,” he said, “but I am little interested in pious Aswydds.”

He turned then, conscious of the limp that would not bear him from them with any authority. He made his departure all the same deliberate and casual, and lingered at the door for a backward look. None of them had moved. Most looked frightened, even Orien.

Petelly had had his fill of thistle-tops, at least for a while, and moved along with ears up as the forest shade drank up the road ahead. Tristen felt only a little shiver of apprehension, knowing that this was the place that had claimed lives of his companions, but as a woods it beckoned green and living, not like Marna, of which it might even be an outgrowth. He went cautiously on both accounts, and he had not gone far inside that shade before he saw, recent in the mud of last night’s rain, the print of another horse.

He knew that Cefwyn would send men up here to bring back their dead. He knew that Heryn had claimed to have rangers in the district—as Cefwyn might have men here that he had not known about.

There were also the men who had killed Cefwyn’s father. There were reasons aplenty to fear the shade ahead. He vividly recalled the arrows that had flown at him when he had ridden with Uwen, when men very near him had died; and he recalled that track of a horse that had appeared as a dark line in the grass near Raven’s Knob that evening he and Cefwyn had fled from Emwy, a warning of someone besides themselves out and about the hills.