They were pale, those two, but no word came from them. They were alike in stature, but the Ivanim Erion was a slim, hard-eyed man in his prime, and the stocky Olmernman Denyn was a youth whose beard had hardly started.

“A hanging offense, no honorable death there, none that your kindred could cherish for their comfort. Is it, sirs?”

The boy’s lips trembled, but the boy set his jaw. From the Ivanim there was a tightening of the jaw but no more protest, no bravado either.

And the waste of such men—one young enough to be on his first muster, and perhaps too young to restrain his temper or his foolishness, and one old enough to know better than the fight he’d gotten into—filled his mouth with distaste.

“You are mine,” he said, “and for your mockery of my law you will learn to serve it, both of you. You will stand guard at my door.”  “My lord,” the guard sergeant protested.

“Dead, they avail nothing. You will stand that duty, sirs, until Idrys sees fit to relieve you. You will eat with that Guelen unit and bed with them together, chained as you are. No one will remove that chain for any cause, and should one of you die for any cause but in my service, I will flay the survivor alive and burn his father’s house. Do you hear me, Erion and Denyn?”

Tears brimmed in the boy’s eyes, and the Ivanim’s bloodless face looked numb as he nodded.

“Then take up your post,” Cefwyn said, and they bowed and went, limping and bloody and unwashed as they were, and still chained together.

He passed them that evening as they stood among the Guelen who would watch the room and not attend him to hall. Blood had dried on their wounds and their faces were ashen with pain and fatigue. He lingered and looked on them, and they gazed on him with apprehension.

“The Guelen do not love their company,” Idrys said as they walked together.

“Does any province of this realm love another?” Cefwyn asked. “This is the third generation since the Sihhé kings. Look you back at them. Is this not a perfect type of my father’s kingdom?”

“Will you mend it by being murdered by them?”

“You will not move me, Idrys.”

“By your own will, you risk your life.”

“Go. You know what I will have you to do.”

“My lord.” Idrys stopped at the stairs. Cefwyn did not look back. The guards that stayed with him were sufficient, and failing those, there was still the bezainted leather and the dagger and sword at his belt.

Chapter 19  

There was formal display in the grand hall, which was Heryn’s, like all else; and Cefwyn had not used it since his formal reception by the Aswydds last fall: Heryn’s gold and lavish ornamentations were most evident here, the wealth of the province on bold display. So was Heryn himself, with his Guelen-imposed guard, and with Orien and Tarien, joined by a thin surly scattering of Amefin earls and thanes of Heryn’s retinue among the crowd of visitors and ealdormen of the town itself.., the Amefin now being outnumbered by the guests and their attendant bodyguards who crowded the guest quarters and who would soon crowd the hall for the banquet to follow. The tables for that affair were not yet brought in. It was all a standing crowd.

Cefwyn drew a deep breath and walked that center carpet, not looking to the sides, and wondering the while about the safety of his back, on which he felt Heryn’s stare, not unaccompanied by the stare of outraged Amefin nobles.

He reached the middle level of the dais and turned, seated himself in the right-hand seat of the throne set there. Then, stiff with hatred, Heryn advanced as far as the third step from the top, bowed to him, and took that place which the Duke of the Amefin had to accept with the prince-viceroy occupying the throne above him.

“My lords,” Cefwyn hailed them, and the Amefin chamberlain rapped the floor with his staff until silence reigned.

One by one the lords were proclaimed, in order of honors and precedence—himself, Heryn, Pelumer, Cevulirn, Umanon, and Sovrag, with trumpet flourishes and unfurling of banners from their standards, pronouncements of lengthy titles and proclamations of ancestral rights, an ordinarily tedious business, one through which the Crown Prince, and likely the lord being named, might watch the candles, or add chains of figures, or parse antique verbs, or do any number of things to maintain himself awake.

But tonight was an uncommonly late assembly, beneath huge chain-anchored circles of oil-filled lamps, which lent their own odd pungency to the war of perfumes and the aroma of foods waiting in the east hall.

Tonight there was a perilous rivalry of voices, of display, of elaboration and martial character, each trying to outdo the other. Cefwyn sat still and watchful throughout, acknowledging compliments and appeals to his personal attention as required, his eyes straying often about the vast ornate hall—easy to become distracted in the forest of serpentine columns and the flash of banners of lords and minor lords. The crowd of Amefin and outsiders alike shifted at each new name, anxiously to estimate each other, to see who was named and who was not, and with what honors. His eyes were not for that detail so much as for the strategic location of his guardsmen, the steel glint of businesslike weapons, the movement of Amefin servants and messengers about the room on, one assumed, needful errands.

As prince, he had to face this assemblage. As prince, he had to hope that no one trod on disputed titles or territory that might bring the knives out. —Sovrag was the one to watch for outright provocation, Umanon for a test of the prince’s authority to summon them—but grant Umanon would be here among the first if he thought that business might be discussed that could work against him. Wild bulls, his father was wont to call the lords of Imor; and having them in yoke meant contentions his father was accustomed to handle. Watch them, he thought: the barons would try him, they damned well would try him.

“My lords,” he said at last, when all ceremony was done, “we bid you welcome in the hall.”

“My lord Prince.” That was Sovrag’s booming voice, coming from the left-hand assembly, and he looked toward the man, whose blue breeks, gilt-edged green cloak, and dark red doublet made him seem more appropriate to brigandage than to the lordship of a province.

And he foreknew exactly what the matter was that Sovrag would bring; he could, with a little deftness, shift it aside. But Sovrag was unsubtle and in his way easier to manage than, say, Cevulirn, on whom one could get no hold at all. So he nodded assent, beckoned, and the big riverlord came forward and set hands on hips in the center of the hall, upheaving all business, all ceremony, on a point of personal interest.

“My lord Prince, in all respect, welcome we may be, but there’s a man of mine in question. I’d know about that matter before we set hand to matters of the court. He’s a boy, no more’n that, and some Ivanim’s got his nose in the air because my boy walked in front of his damn horse.”

“A hanging offense, my lord of Olmern, that’s the issue. Not the damn horse. Nothing else but the drawing of weapons under the King’s peace.

Yours is not the only lordship involved.”

Cevulirn stepped forward, as colorless in gray and white as Sovrag was garish. His pale regard was chill and angry. “Since the matter is now public,” said the Ivanim lord in a voice for which others made silence, soft and piercing as a slight. “You have shamed a man of honor and of long and personal service to me, Your Highness. You would have received my protest privily this evening, and it is doubtless awaiting your attention through appropriate process, but since the lord of Olmern brings the matter in public, and since it seems Your Highness’ pleasure is to hear it, I will say that I have had a report of the incident. The law decrees hanging. It does not decree the shameful state which you have accorded him.”