“My lords,” Cefwyn said, and could not resist a bow, ironic mockery of their clear apprehensions. “The bloody Marhanen bids you all welcome and hopes for your good opinion. Bear the Regent’s banner next to mine. Such are the terms the lady Regent requests, and Ylesuin will honor—whatever the lady requests. I cannot daunt her. I am resolved to please her.”

The Elwynim bowed. The lady, to his astonishment, blushed.

But he said to Idrys, as Synanna, on his casual mistouch of the reins, brushed Drugyn’s shoulder: “The west gate, for the gods’ sake, not the south. Bid someone remove the heads tonight.”

Cefwyn was completely occupied with the lords around him, and Tristen thought it a good time to keep silence. It was comfortable enough to ride with Uwen; and it was comfortable to be riding up a street he knew, among people who knew him.

But it was a long ride up that hill, with the townsfolk of Henas’amef turned out to stare and talk together, wide-eyed, at the display of Elwynim banners that he was sure they had never expected in their streets.

Then someone cried out, “Lord Sihhé!” and others took it up, crying

“Lord Sihhé!”

They did not cry out that way for the other lords. He had had his fill of being conspicuous, last night. He was tired, he was aching and, as certain as he had been not so long ago that he could not possibly bear the confines of his rooms and the mundane chatter of Uwen and his servants, he thought now that nothing could be more dear or more welcome to him.

The rain had come down on them most of the night and again during the morning. Petelly was switching his ears and clearly had honeyed oats in mind, and Uwen’s borrowed Ivanim mount had protested strenuously at the gate, knowing that he belonged down in the Ivanim camp, as all but a few of their Ivanim escort went aside to their well-earned rest. The Ivanim had come with provisions, as the Elwynim had, so they had not gone hungry; and they had rested on the journey—at least three times; but only once, toward dawn, had they stopped for enough time for men and horses alike to catch a little sleep.

It had not been enough—nor real rest. Tristen had feared sleep as he had not feared the ghosts that walked the earth of Althalen, and sat half drowsing, content to watch Uwen’s rest as Uwen had sworn himself willing to watch his—but Uwen had very quickly nodded off in the quiet and the stillness of the wind that, after the gale against their wet clothing, had seemed like warmth.

The lady had dreamed. The lady had dreamed of children’s games, and children’s songs, and the childish voices haunted him no less than the ghosts, rhymes about blackbirds and skipping steps, and memories of rain-puddles and gray stone.

They terrified him. He knew that they were her memories and not his.

And in them she had felt small, which he never had. Their memories were so much the same, or hers had delved into his, and diverged again, into being she, and being he, and living in a bright hall and fearing the dark, and living in a keep that always ran and rippled with it.

Ynefel touched his drowsing thoughts with poignant warmth, with longing to see his familiar loft and the stairs to his room, and to hear Mauryl’s familiar step-and-tap; but the lady had waked from his dream with an outcry, afraid of the stone faces, and Tasien had asked her what was wrong.

A nightmare, she had answered Lord Tasien, and hugged her cloak about her and shivered.

That had more than stung: it wounded him; and he had sat watching her while she fell back to sleep, thinking, in his own fears, how very strange it was to have been so small as she had been, and to have weighed so little on the earth, and yet to have enjoyed the same pleasures as he treasured—except, except dodging around the stone walls, and looking at the faces, and thinking of them as familiar.

She had never known her father was a wizard.., or whatever it was that gave her father the strength he had to travel that gray place. He had wondered once if everyone could go there. He had wondered whether it was a place Emuin had made for them alone-or that Emuin had let him into; and here at least was someone as surprised and dismayed by that place as he had been.

It made him feel.., older, somehow. It made him wish he could give her in one instant all that he knew, and have someone then who would always understand the things he saw and how he saw them; it made him wish that he could leave all the others behind in camp and go somewhere alone and tell her and ask her.., so many things, so many questions that stirred tonight in the grass, in the leaves, in the memories of Ynefel’s creakings at night, the force of a gathering storm of Words and Names and so, so much about the world that he might almost understand if events and dangers had not swept him from one thing to the other. It was like the pigeons carried on the storm: they stayed aloft, they flew, but they rode the gusts, not choosing their own path so much as choosing the violence that went where they wished to go; they dived at the last into the safety of the loft on the blast of the rain, and a boy who was never truly a boy waited for them, with the wind blowing straws about and blasting the rain in through the broken boards—that boy called them home to the loft, waved his arms and called out Hurry! hurry! never knowing they were helpless to do more than they did.

He could not have been different than he had been. He could not have been the child that the lady had been. He could not remember the long ago that people kept attributing to him. He could find only dark before the light in Mauryl’s keep.

The banners snapped and thumped in a wind that had never warmed with the sun. He saw, past their intersecting folds, that they were coming to the western gate, the stable gate. They passed beneath the arch, and into the stable-court by the shortest way, and to the western steps of the Zeide, where grooms ran to take the horses, Cefwyn’s first, and the lady’s, Cevulirn’s and Umanon’s, and the other lords’. A boy came running to take Petelly’s reins.

Tristen dismounted quietly, and Uwen got down. He saw a boy hand Cefwyn a stick, which he did use, and seemed for a moment to be in pain, but Cefwyn was at hand as Ninévrisé slid down in a flurry of skirts: so was Tasien there to take the lady’s arm. Cefwyn and Lord Tasien were polite to each other, and Lord Haurydd and Lord Ysdan were there, all of them being polite, all of them concerned about the lady.

He supposed it would be difficult to add himself to that crowd. He could speak to the lady in a way they could not. He could tell her things they could not: he would gladly, when his knees were not shaking from exhaustion, help her explain to Cefwyn what had happened, and why there was a danger up by Emwy, and what had happened to the old man and to the Elwynim rebels.

But he knew better now than to intrude on Cefwyn when Cefwyn was dealing with the lords—least of all, he supposed, when Cefwyn was dealing with the lady Regent.  Marry her?

Cefwyn had talked about marriage, before now.

Marriage was a Word of great importance to a man and a woman.

Marriage entrained other Words so ... numerous and so strange to him that he lost his awareness of where he was, and realized that he was walking across the courtyard, watching Cefwyn and Idrys and the lady and the lords climb the steps, Cefwyn using his stick and limping in pain and talking all the while.

It was one of those moments in which he felt shut out, unwelcome.

And he supposed Cefwyn was angry with him for leaving—deservedly so. He wanted Cefwyn to be as glad to see him as he appeared to be to see the lady—as he wished the lady herself would speak well of him. He thought he had deserved it. He could show her things Cefwyn could not.

But, no, they would settle things as they pleased, without him.