Cefwyn turned to the page, who stood the while frozen in horror. “Go back, lad; see the lords at the gate offered all courtesies and welcome.

Have the master-at-arms run up the flags of all our guests beside mine and Amefel’s, as they arrive. Go. Haste.”

The boy sketched a hasty bow and fled. Cefwyn returned to his table, sat down, and found his place in the records. “Perhaps,” he said to Heryn, “you would care instead to assist me in my reckonings of the proper tax. Doubtless you can explain these accounts and the source and disposition of these revenues.”

There was absolute silence. No one moved, neither Heryn nor the guards. Heryn leaned insolently against the table by the door, red-bearded, elegant Heryn, who had succeeded after all in surprising him with an audacity and mental quickness greater than he would have believed in the man.

Cefwyn, seething with anger, turned a massive page, the numbers on which swam in front of him.

Tax the people at more than the Crown rate, then lend them money back to pay the tax-collecting interest through the town’s moneylenders who let the income out again through theft fingers. Those books also his men were searching for, this time in town. Well it was to have probed the man to the quick, he decided. Almost he had regretted pressing him thus far, but now at least he knew the temper of the man, underestimated as it had been.

“We shall go down,” he said, “and meet Amefel’s other guests. It should be time. Will you join me, Your Grace?”  “Of course, Your Highness,” Heryn said.

He closed the book, and swept up with his own guard the Guelen guardsmen with Heryn, men whose eyes were shadowed with a service in which they alternated sleep and duty. The duty would be lessened with the arrival at that gate, with troops other than Guelen and Amefin available to dispose about the Zeide.

They went out and down the hall at a brisk pace, down the steps, and got no further than the turn toward the doors before, shadows against the light, a troop of men came in.

Cevulirn and Uman0n together, travel-stained, dusted from the road, and weary from a day’s ride. “Pages!” Cefwyn called out. “The lords’ baggage to their quarters. Rouse out Lord Kerdin and see to their men!”

He met the lords with a handclasp and a clap on the arm that raised dust, the consequence of a large troop in a dry spell on the roads. “Welcome, welcome, both. A long day, a long ride. You are the earliest. I trust my men have been down by the gate to provide your captains what they need.”

“Prompt and well-prepared, Your Highness. Your Grace.” The latter Cevulirn addressed to Heryn, who met them as if he had remained undisputed lord in Henas’amef.

“Your Highness, Your Grace.” Umanon was a smallish, stout man with drooping mustaches and the figure of a wheel blazoned in white on his green surcoat: lord of Imor Lenfialim, and a master of rich farmlands and the great high road. Cevulirn stood at his shoulder, a thin, tall man whose colorless hair and mustache and gray surcoat made him curiously obscure to the eye; his device was a white horse that betokened the wide plains of Ivanor, the good grasslands and sleek horses that were the wealth of the unfenced south.

“We’ve arranged water and wood for your encampments,” Cefwyn said. “We trust you’ll leave your captains in charge and enjoy the hospitality of the hall. We expect more of your brother lords to arrive, and this evening we’ll make formal reception in the grand hall, granted the rain stays at bay and our other guests arrive in timely fashion. At worst, good food and good company for those of us who do meet.”

“At your pleasure, my lord Prince,” said Umanon; and in his dark eyes, as in Cevulirn’s gray stare, was keen curiosity; but they were too prudent to ask questions where answers had not been advanced in the letters or put foremost in the meeting.

“It is not war,” Heryn said, “nor is anyone taken ill. I am as puzzled as yourselves at this gathering. But welcome, my lords, welcome, all the same.”

Cefwyn smiled tautly at Heryn’s conscious malice and brazen effrontery, and saw dismay leap into the lords’ eyes, a second glance at him, and caution.

“His Grace Lord Heryn is not in favor, today, as you see. He even sends to His Majesty in protest of my orders. But I am jealous of my life, my lords, as I assure you is my royal father, and Heryn has lately been most careless in that regard. You surely noticed the ornaments of our south gate. I urge you take precautions for yourselves: assassins of some stamp or other have been a damned pest in Amefel this summer. Heryn does of course swear they’re Elwynim. But overtaxed farmers can grow desperate, and even blame their prince for their plight.”

There was a lifting of heads, scant glances toward Heryn: there was no great bond among the southern lords, and with that handful of blunt words he marked Heryn as plague-touched. Heryn’s poisonous tongue merited him a visit to the cellars, but to have the man delivered to prison in his own hall, particularly under witness of the neighbors, was extreme.

Heryn’s boldness so far had saved him from his own prison, and his answer had, as happened, neatly warned the visiting lords, always jealous of their privileges, that they well might be cautious: that the Marhanen prince might be exceeding the authority the King had lent him.

But now Heryn bowed, all humble, and was oh, so far from the drawing of a weapon that alone would give the prince clear cause to remove a baron of Ylesuin to his own well-stocked cellars. Clever man, he thought, and far braver than he had reckoned him.

“This evening, my lords,” Cefwyn murmured, and they bowed in courtesy, prepared to go off with an assortment of pages and attendants.

Heryn, too, took his chance to leave under that general dismissal, bowing and sweeping up the Guelen guards assigned to him, so that his treatment in his own hall would be clear to his unasked guests. The man had a gift and an instinct for epic.

Heryn was Amefin, he was noble, accepted by the Amefin lords as well as by the peasants he abused, at least as one of their own.

There had not been another choice but the Aswydds and their ilk to rule the province. There might be, now. Annas had been instructing Tristen in protocols, in manners, in courtly matters, and Annas reported him a quick and gracious hearer. “A pleasure, m’lord,” was Annas’ assessment of him.

He climbed the stairs, went back to his apartment and to, as he planned, the cursed books, wherein his accountant had placed small papers and notes explaining the artistry with which the Aswyddim had entered here and entered there their meandering sums.

He left his guard at the doors, went through with the sergeant of the detail to open the door for him, and went inside.

A movement, dark and unexpected, by the window, caught his eye.

Idrys.

Cefwyn dropped his hand from his dagger and the beating of his heart began again.

“My lord,” said Idrys. “We could not overtake the messenger. A horse was hidden for him at the Averyne crossing.”

“He is to my father,” Cefwyn said, on his second whole breath. “So swears Heryn.”

“That was his direction, my lord.” Pale dust overlay Idrys’ black armor and etched lines into his face, making his eyes starker and more cruel than their wont. “I returned when I saw that there was no likelihood of my both overtaking him and reaching the town again by dark; I dispatched men in pursuit, but if he rides to the limit, on that horse, he may escape them. That he is bound for your father may be the truth; but that is not the assumption the guard will make if he lags within arrowflight of them. Unfortunate man.”

Cefwyn frowned and folded his arms. “We have come to a point of final reckoning with Heryn. He trusts he knows my limits. He is about to learn he does not. I am glad you did return.”