Came, too, one town official of Henas’amef, creaking with age, who seized Tristen’s hand, to Tristen’s clear astonishment, and knelt and kissed it, tears running down his face.

“M’lord Sihhé,” the man hailed him. “We believe in ye.”

Mark that for remembrance, Cefwyn thought angrily, wondering at the man’s brazen act; and then saw Tristen’s look, which was touched by the gesture and was completely bewildered as the old man’s tears wet his hand.

Shame reproved him then, as he saw that there was no politicking at all in the old man’s tears and trembling. It was no treason, only an old man who had waited a long time to see what he was willing to agree the old man had indeed seen—and a better age for the folk of Amefel and Elwynor if it were true and accepted by the Marhanen: that was what he had held out to the population of Amefel. He saw it clearly now. The frail old official knelt and kissed his hand, too, and he helped the man up, and, more, embraced him. He was frightened—disturbed to the heart—by his own jealous impulses.

He knew his grandfather’s mind, the quick suspicion, the angers, the jealousy with which the old man had brought up his two sons—the same jealousy that worked within him and within all the Marhanens. It was their curse. It was their besetting fault. He kissed the old man on the cheek, in a cold-hearted demonstration of Marhanen recognition of the native Amefin.

He was Marhanen. He couldn’t help the politicking. It, along with temper, ran in the blood.

All about him after that was tumult. A press of Amefin bodies unnerved his guards. He, with Tristen, received the respects of Amefin who never before this would have dared approach the Prince of Ylesuin.

The hour was his. He had made peace in his district. A Sihhé! banner was on display in a hall where it had once hung as sovereign, now grouped with the banners of Ylesuin. A Sihhé, aetheling in the minds of the people, had sworn fealty and allegiance to the Marhanen prince and been recognized and legitimized—a prince himself: that went with it. The prophecy on which Elwynor should reunite with Amefel—was fulfilled, but not as the Regents of Elwynor would have it.

Servants were carrying in the tables, meanwhile. Annas was in charge.

Annas could read the subtleties of a situation the way master Tamurin could read accounts, and knew when to make distraction, and when to make it loud and urgent.

There was venison, there was pork, there was rabbit and there were partridge pies, a specialty of the region. There were pitchers of wine, wheels of white and yellow cheese, white bread and black. Plates whisked off and onto tables with the precision of weapons-drill, and there was an endless succession of courses, a loaf of eggs-in-sausage, a course of roast veal and another of fish, delivered not alone to the huge hall, but to the adjacent Zeide weapons-court, where the gentry of Henas’amef, in all their finery, had had the prince’s invitation to the tables set up since evening.

There were Guelen guards at every entry, and weapons not in urgent display, but the guards were sober, watchful, and well convinced every potential assassin or hirer of assassins among the Amefin was likely a guest tonight in hall or out in the common court. But festivities and food abounded in the courtyards as well as in the hall, not to mention the kettles of stew set up in the lower town court, offering supper to any bringer of a bowl and supper and a trencher of bread to those who had none, on the Prince’s largesse.

Pay due courtesy to the guards, weary and sleepless as they had already been: Idrys had admonished them, to a man, on the prince’s orders, that there were to be no complaints of pushing, no press with pikes or weapons, no hesitation if needed, but no temptation of Amefin tempers. And cheer spread throughout the Zeide’s courts, audible through the windows above the tumult inside: there were cheers raised, there were toasts, there was moderate tipsiness, but only once so far was there a breach of the peace, and that over a young damsel of the town and a trio of suitors. There might have been a resort to the King’s law.

There might have been arrests.

But, informed of the cause, Cefwyn chose not to notice it, nor to have the guards acknowledge seeing it. He had Heryn on one side and Umanon on the other, with Sovrag and Pelumer within easy distance, Cevulirn and Tristen out of easy speaking range at the high table.

He also had Idrys at his back, constantly, as Uwen held anxious watch at Tristen’s, and other lords’ men hovered in similar fashion. If there was to be amanita in the sauce or a knife drawn at table, there was at least sufficient force to be sure of revenge. But Heryn had no Amefin, but a

Guelen man to watch his back, and it might be well, Cefwyn thought, that Heryn had that for his own protection. Before he had even come down to hall to hear Heryn’s protestations of undying affection, he had set the Guelen servants free to gossip to their Amefin counterparts of

Heryn’s account books, a dispensation of gossip loosed with the same mindful intent with which he would have signed a death warrant.

And if there was tonight any anxiousness in Henas’amef, particularly in that courtyard, besides the raising of a Sihhé standard contrary to the King’s law, it surely revolved around those books. Two messages thus far had come to him from the Zeide doors, stating that the sender had information on usury, if the prince would send messengers to this appointment and that on the morrow.

The prince tucked the small missives in his shirt and measured his wine consumption, while Heryn drank far too much and Umanon far too little to be pleasant.

Sovrag leaned up the table, jeopardizing a goblet. “M’lord Prince! D’ the Elwynim know about this Sihhé lad?”  “I wager they will,” he called back.

“Ye wisht ’em t’ know, m’lord? We can ’complish that by mornin’, an ye will.”

“I think we can wait, m’lord Sovrag, on the ordinary flow of gossip.

On the other hand—” A thought came to him, not a new thought, but new to the moment.

“Eh?” A page was serving sweetmeats. Sovrag’s fist seized a full share and two, and Sovrag never moved from staring at him. “Eh, m’lord?”

“Bridges! I’d know for certain about those bridges!”

“Along the Elwynim reach, me lord?”

“Oh, aye, on the Elwynim reach. No, I was asking for the Arachim’s bridges! I’d know if there’s preparation for decking—such as could be brought up quickly, laid on or taken off.”

Sovrag grinned. “Well, I passed right under Emwy’s, and saw nothing—but, then I wasn’t looking for decking stowed out of sight. I could have a boat have a look there and on upstream, m’lord Prince, if you was to promise ’em lads a sovereign.”

“You have it,” he said, to the scandal of lord Umanon, past whom the unlordly barter flowed. “Two sovereigns if they don’t tell the Elwynim!”

Sovrag pounded the table and laughed aloud. “Ye got ’er, m’lord, ye got ’er! Brigoth!” He summoned his man close, seized him by the front of his doublet to bring him closer, and shouted into his ear something about a boat and launching by moonset.

“Idrys,” Cefwyn said, and Idrys leaned into range. “Two sovereigns.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The stress on his title said what Umanon’s silent outrage said, that the Prince of Ylesuin had no need to haggle with a subject lord, or to pay him for his services. But the two sovereigns would find their way to Sovrag’s purse, he was well certain, and he by the gods liked a lord who for once put a simple price on his work.

“He seems a pleasant enough witchling!” Sovrag said next. “He don’t look more ’n a lad.”

“He’s honest,” Cefwyn said back, knowing the voices were carrying.

“And fair-minded.”

“Mauryl always dealt fair,” Sovrag said. “If he come by Mauryl’s will, and if the gold from that trade be done, then what he says is so, the old man’s gone. So say I. And him sworn t’ you, me lord, and to the King?”