“By his oath, sir, yes.”

“‘At’s a neat trick,” Sovrag said, at which there were several shocked faces. And then seized a page. “Pour for the Sihhé lord,” Sovrag said. “A health for His Lordship of the Sihhé!”

The page ran to do as he was bidden, by a man of Sovrag’s size. Lie down with hounds, Cefwyn said to himself, sorry now he’d set the man in motion, but, refusing to be set aback by the riverlord’s raucous good will, he rose himself and proposed the health, of the King first, of the company second, of the Sihhé lord third.

Annas himself poured Sovrag’s cup full, one of the big ones, at each toast, and at each health, after his prince’s own lengthy praise of the King, of the company, and of Mauryl’s unexpected heir, Sovrag drained his cup to the dregs.

Cefwyn proposed the health of their Amefin hosts, at last, not mentioning Heryn, who doubtless smoldered in indignation.

Which saved him the decision, finally, whether to toast Heryn last, for Sovrag collapsed off the bench, and he had drunk every toast, himself.

But started with fewer. Which, he heard remarked as the banquet dwindled down to the determined drinkers, might well become legend, how Prince Cefwyn, standing, had drunk Sovrag of the Olmernmen under the table.

It was not at all the report he wished his royal father to receive.

But the evening, he judged, when he declared the lords all duly welcomed, was otherwise a success.

Still, afterward, walking up the stairs to his apartment with Tristen at his side and Idrys and Uwen Lewen’s-son at his back, he could not shake the conviction that the evening had not gone quite as well as he would have wished, and that the lords liked each other no better than they had in the beginning.

Heryn was the poison, he said to himself. Heryn had no reason to be pleased with the evening, far less reason to be pleased with Tristen’s appearance under forbidden arms and, what had surely galled Heryn, Tristen’s health being drunk quite willingly by the other lords.

And least of all could Heryn be happy in the slights heaped on him by the prince under his roof and in the failure of the southern lords, especially the lesser lords of Amefel, traditionally fractious against the Marhanen, to rise in support of his challenge. That such a man as Heryn had accepted the humiliation of apology was not incredible after the rest of Heryn’s performance; the sincerity of it, however, was far from credible, and he felt uneasy even with the guards around. He asked himself how he had fallen into the trap of accepting Heryn’s public contrition, or how he had gone from being certain he wished to be rid of Heryn to envisioning ways to keep Heryn, momentarily forgetting his sins of taxation, in favor of the functions Heryn and his predecessors had very aptly performed for the Marhanen, namely keeping a key and very troublesome province quiet. Heryn knew the Amefin rebels well enough to prevent any untimely rising. In point of fact, Heryn might have no interest whatever in rebellion against the whole Marhanen line. It was most particularly

Cefwyn Marhanen that Heryn wished dead: Cefwyn who was onto his tricks, Cefwyn who had probed into his books, Cefwyn who would be far too active and aggressive a Marhanen king. If Efanor became King,

Efanor, who hated the borderlands, would never visit here, and that would suit Heryn Aswydd well. As their royal father had suited the

Aswydds—until he produced an heir perhaps too forward in his opinions and too public in his excesses, an heir whose edges King Inereddrin wished to blunt against provincial obduracy and the facts of rule in an unwilling and witch-haunted border district.

But Heryn was (postponing the decision on Heryn’s fate, at least) safely under guard. His sisters, ordinarily the bright moths to lordly flame, had flittered away to guarded quarters and lordly virtue was safe under this roof tonight, at least from the Aswyddim.

They reached the crest of the stairs, the safe territory, the vast torchlit hall stretching away into intermittent darkness. They walked together in separate silences until the guard which escorted Tristen necessarily parted company from that which stayed about him, going to the opposite side of the hall.

Then he realized how very absorbed in his own thoughts he had been, and looked up to bid Tristen good night, to—as he realized he should-tell him his hours of study with Annas had done well for him.

But he had waited an instant too long. Tristen had his back to him now, and walked on with Uwen and his escort, head bowed, a tall, formidable shape, did one not know how gentle-spirited—black sparked with silver, under the dim light of the wall-sconces, which seemed far too grim a color for their childlike guest.

So somber Tristen seemed, so strangely sad and defenseless in that company of soldiers, though he towered over the most of them.

Elfwyn, the thought came unbidden, and a chill came over him. Feckless, murdered Sihhé king.

Elfwyn would not even fight for his own life, at the last. He would not leave his hall or his studies until the Marhanen soldiers came for him, to bring him out to die. Elfwyn had cared only for his books, and they had burned those with Althalen.

So, so much knowledge and lore of the Sihhé had been lost there.

He had launched war—or peace—this night. He had raised the standard his grandfather and his father alike had banned for fear of Elwynim pretenders.

But he had granted what he had granted to Tristen even to the good of the Elwynim. In Tristen, in this sonless dwindling of the Regents’ line in Elwynor, he had a chance for peace and resolution of the old dispute, and Mauryl had sent it to him, perhaps a test of Ylesuin’s willingness for peace—and a test of his kingship, what he would be, what he might be, if he could settle that old dispute and make a lasting peace with the realm of Elwynor—itself containing six provinces—that had once, with Ylesuin, Amefel, Marna, and lands west and south, constituted the Sihhé domains.

The chained men at his door jarred his muddled thoughts: the Olmern lad and the Ivanim were still on watch. He saw the boy’s eyes glassy in the glare of candles.  He stopped.

“Is this man ill?”

The Ivanim lordling maintained grim silence. The boy said, “No, Your Highness.”

He looked to the Guelen sergeant. “Change guard, sergeant. Idrys has, I presume, given you my conditions to them?”  “Yes, my lord Prince.”

“They’re to receive the same standard fare and the same watches as your own. Do gently to them if they are gentle men with each other. If one kills the other, report it to me. They know the consequence.”

“Highness.”

Cefwyn went into his apartment, seeking the warmth of his own fire.

He wrapped his arms close about his sides and stood with head bowed, suddenly feeling the weight of the metal-studded leather. His joints ached.

“M’lord.”

Idrys startled him. He had not known Idrys had come in yet.

“Guards are to remain as set, m’lord Prince?”

“Gods, yes, they remain.”

“Yes, my lord Prince.”

Idrys left him, seeming satisfied. Cefwyn walked into the other room, his bedchamber, his eyes automatically searching the shadows for ambush. It was lifelong habit. He expected to die by assassination-someday. It was the common fate in his house. He did not fear the shadows—as his grandfather had and his father did. He needed no candles.

He had no faith in the Quinalt or in candles blessed by priests. It was his inherited nature, perhaps, to grow gloomy and fatalistic.

But he had perhaps solved Mauryl’s riddle, this Shaping the wizard had cast on the Marhanen doorstep. He was the third generation after Althalen, the generation in which all curses and chances, by all the accounts, ultimately came home. He was the King-to-be of Ylesuin. And Tristen—Tristen could become the surety the Marhanen King had on this border, perhaps a provincial lord, even a tributary king, himself, over a diminished realm, in which men of the east would not be subordinate to Sihhé lords or Sihhé kings. It was peace he had begun to build, it was a settlement of ancient disputes. It was the dream of a kingdom without the need to keep half its peasants constantly under arms, or with weapons within reach; a kingdom without the need to dread their own western provinces as a breeding-place of assassins. He had seen enough of assassins, attended enough executions, seen enough funerals.