“Yes, Your Majesty,” came the answer; “Yes, Your Majesty,” came in awestruck tones at his back as he rode out westward with his growing company.

And there on the muddy road, plain as a horse in a henyard, were the Elwynim, with the banners of three earls behind the black and white and gold Tower banner of the Regent of Elwynor.

And with them, the pennons of six squads of the Ivanim light horse.

That was much better; Cevulirn’s men were escorting the visitors in.

There was Uwen Lewen’s-son, up at the fore. And best of all, Tristen, thank the blessed gods: he had no idea how all three elements had gotten together, but he was both vastly relieved and disquieted anew, and for the same reason.

Synanna went into his bone-jarring trot in his momentary lapse. He corrected it, and in the abating of pain, and past the cracking satin of his own red banner, saw a black-haired woman in a mail shirt and a billow of mud-spattered blue skirt that blew back on white linen—a woman, his startled gaze informed him, who rode preceded only by the Regent’s standard-bearer, ahead of the other banners; more, the Regent’s crown flashed in that mass of dark hair—and he knew that hair, that heart-shaped face that had resided for months in a keepsake chest in his bedchamber.

“The Regent’s daughter, in the flesh,” Idrys said, coldest reason. “No sign of the lord Regent. And with Ynefel. What have we knocking on our gates, m’lord King?”

“I’11 wait to see,” he muttered, while his thoughts were flitting wildly to Tristen’s safety, bridges spanning the Lenfialim, the missing messenger, the whereabouts of the lord Regent Uleman, the young lady’s distractingly pretty and apparently unconscious display—and her reasons for approaching the gates of Henas’amef.

To pursue a royal marriage by passage of arms? He did not think it likely. But she was certainly far deeper into Amefel than any lordly delegation reasonably ought to come without his leave. It was an extravagant challenge of his good nature, which the Elwynim might guess was not good at all at the moment.

And Tristen showed up in this business?

Trust Tristen’s naive confidence. And damn Idrys if he dared remind him now he had predicted Tristen’s blithe honesty could be his bane someday.

Their two parties reached a distance at which their banner-bearers mutually stopped for protocols, and he rode up even with his banner, with Idrys riding beside him and Cevulirn and Umanon and their standard-bearers staying behind him. The young woman similarly advanced to the Regent’s standard, and one man rode to her side.

“We’ve come to speak with the King,” that man called out.

“Stay back,” he said to Idrys, and raised the wager by riding forward of Idrys. Only his banner-bearer advanced with him.

There was consternation on the opposing man’s part, a frown on the lady’s face as her captain put out a hand, clearly wishing her to make no reciprocal advance. But the young woman rode forward alone, and the Regent’s standard-bearer advanced with her.

“I am King Cefwyn,” he said as she stopped her horse within a lance’s length of him. The portrait-painter had not lied, never mind the mud and the mail coat: the image that had haunted his more pensive evenings was facing him in life, a face pale and wind-stung and afraid, and a resolve not giving backward a step.

“The lord of Ynefel has made himself our hostage,” she said, “against your grant of safe conduct for me and my men back across the border.”

“I shall certainly grant that. I would be obliged, however, if you returned me the lord of Ynefel and accepted my simple word to that effect, gracious lady. Am I correct? Do I recognize you, or have you a sister?”

“I am the Regent.” The voice quavered slightly. “My father is dead, last evening, Your Majesty. I have come to ask your forbearance for our presence in your lands, and your permission to fortify a camp in your territory.”

So Emuin was right. It was a sad event for the lady to report, a grief more recent than his own. It was, moreover, a very precise military term, doubtless her advisors’ idea, which she had been told to ask in its precise wording. He wondered if she understood it.

“To fortify a camp,” he echoed. His view of blowing skirts and white, mud-spattered linen was competing with the consideration of Elwynim in view of his very vulnerable town. “I give you my sincere condolences, and ask why fortified, Your Most Honorable Grace.”

“I understand that Elwynim crossed the river against your father the King up in Emwy district.”

“Yes,” he said, not seeing how this answered his question. “They did.

In collusion with the Aswyddim. We recovered shields from that field, and wounded now dead, three of them of Lower Saissonnd.”

“Caswyddian,” she declared without hesitation. “Lord Caswyddian of Saissonnd. A rebel against my father—a rival of Aséyneddin.”

He had heard rumors, he knew that name and had marked it down as a man who would pay in Heryn’s fashion, did he turn out to have been on that field at Emwy, or to have known of it—and did he ever fall into his hands; but he did not wish to tell her what he had heard or how much he knew. “So you bring Elwynor’s troubles onto Amefin soil, and want to fortify a camp, making us, I suppose, your allies of a sort, certainly as Aséyneddin will see it. That could cause us trouble. And, forgive my suspicion, Your Grace, but of how many men do you propose to make this camp?”

“These men—” There was the least tremor in the lady’s chin, the first thorough fracture in her composure. “—these fifteen men, sir. Thirty-three were camped with my father. A band we think was Caswyddian’s attacked us last night and half my men stayed to guard our retreat, so that I might remain alive to make this request—in which regard, I would ask you, if you would, if you would be so gracious, should they chance into your hands—place them under the same safe conduct.”

That last seemed both sincere and from a lady not used to asking abject favors of strangers.

“I shall,” he said, “most gladly, and I shall advise my searchers to be careful. I must, however, advise you, Your Grace, that fifteen men hardly constitute a fortified camp, certainly none to strike fear into your enemies.”

“Fifteen men is what I have, Your Majesty. But if we could make that camp as a secure point, and send into Elwynor—”

“You can gain more men for your camp?”

“I am confident, sir.”

Confident, he believed not in the least. But it was a sensible plan, and a far better one than he had expected of a young woman in such a desperate situation. Whether or not it was her idea, she presented it with authority, used the right words—arid did know why the camp should be fortified. It was the Sihhé entrenchment, plain and simple: dig deep and hold on, then spread out.

More, she had not once appealed him in terms of the marriage proposal lying just uphill in his bedchamber, not so much as acknowledged it existed, nor asked for troops, nor requested alliance with Ylesuin. The mischief the artist had put into the eyes was all iron and fire today—gray, was the answer to what the artist had made ambiguous.

They were still ambiguous. Gray as morning mist. Gray as new iron.

The mouth had dimples at the corners, but they were part of the set of a determined jaw, which he would like to see in that other expression-gods, he knew this face. He had lived with this face. He was fascinated out of his good sense—so fascinated he had imagined beyond her proposed camp and her proposed recruitment of an unspecified number of Elwynim onto his side of the river to launch a war from his territory against her enemies—and not asking the number of men this Caswyddian and gods-knew-who-else might have across the river up there, and where his post rider might have disappeared to.

He needed to ask Tristen what he had seen. He needed to talk to the Ivanim captain about how what he had seen agreed with what the lady now Regent was saying. His leg was hurting and he was distracted by Synanna’s restlessness.