At the farthest end of the servants’ level was another narrow stairs that led down past a narrow slit of a window, which dimly lit the passage above, and by this stairs, he descended back to his own hall— a long, polished hall largely untenanted in winter, except for him. At this end of the hall, the last watch - candles had burned down to guttering stubs, overpowered by the light of the tall windows at the landing of the central stairs.
His part of the hall was in shadow, and with a considerable agitation he opened his own door and slipped into his own empty rooms.
Their fire was all coals, lending heat to the room. The tall windows, on which the curtains were drawn back, were milky with frost but gave their 6 3
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cold, dim light. The last remnants of Paisi’s preparations remained on the little table, the things he had thought Paisi should take, like bits of cord and the fine new boots, which Paisi had declined. Paisi had worn all his shirts, and both his pairs of trousers, for warmth. The good boots, he said he would not take, but he had worn his second - best.
And all was done.
Now Otter had only to wait, and delay notice of their conspiracy.
He started to sit down on the fireplace stones, in the homey way, but he took the chair instead, constrained to be a man, and a lord at that, and to command the servants and maintain a young lord’s dignity— if he had to order servants about, it was hardly the time to have soot on one’s knees or scuffed boots. He shifted his feet down when the soles grew too hot, watched the line of moisture ebb on the darkened leather: lord he might pretend to be, but he had to tend his own soaked boots and rub the luster back into them to cover the evidence— he was obliged to put away their leavings and make his bed and do all those things Paisi had been doing since he came here, things which he very well knew how to do. At Gran’s, bedmaking was a matter of throwing a coverlet over and making a sitting place out of their sleeping place. Here, all the bedclothes were ordered, and precise, and immaculate.
If he could keep up the pretense for three days, he thought, and not let slip to Aewyn that Paisi was gone, then Paisi could get as far as Averyne crossing, where he would pass into Amefel, well, granted the snow might make his passage somewhat slower— but close enough.
There was a flaw in their plan, which loomed perfectly clear now that everything was beyond recall: the stablemaster, and Feiny, and Feiny’s empty stall. The stablemaster would ask the stableboy, the stableboy would say that Feiny had gone out in the earliest light, then— then the stablemaster, who knew who Feiny belonged to, would start wondering what the king’s bastard son was up to and when he would come back. He might waste a little time inquiring down the hill and asking someone to find out whether Paisi’s horse was still in pasture, but possibly not.
Despite all that luck could do, by dark, perhaps even by noon, the stablemaster might ask questions of the gate wardens uptown and down, and the gate wardens were attached to the Guard Commander, and the Guard Commander might start thinking that perhaps he should tell the king’s personal guard or the seniormost of the king’s servants that the king’s son had failed to bring Feiny back from an early - morning ride.
But he had told the gate warden, hadn’t he, that he had sent Paisi on an errand, so there. That might bring the question down to Feiny’s being 6 4
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missing, with all his gear, and the stableboy having been part of it, the boy might be in for punishment for having helped them. He was worried on that account, but he knew nothing he could do that would not put their plans at risk and possibly have Paisi in trouble. He would have to make it up to the boy if he took a beating.
The word would eventually get to his father, however, by whatever route, and he would do well to tell his father first, would he not?
He hoped that all the luck that had run with them was now going with Paisi, because it suddenly seemed to be quite precarious, where he sat.
He could run down the hall and beg audience. But the king was busy with important things, and news of his misdeeds would not fi nd sympathy with anyone in the king’s entourage. The king surely wouldn’t be too concerned if a servant ran an errand home, with the intention to come back.
And hadn’t the king given him Feiny outright? Better if they could have used Paisi’s horse, who was coated for the weather, but they had all Feiny’s gear, and had him warm, and assured him being fed, and if Gran’s luck was moving Paisi home— he just had to hold out.
He stopped dead on that thought, stopped so long that his boot soles scorched and stung. He imagined the moment he would face his father.
“Sire,” he would say, “Paisi went home to see to Gran.” That was certainly the truth.
But then, inevitably: “Why?” his father would ask.
And what could he say? They were all Quinalts here, except the queen, who had no reason to love him because he was the king’s bastard, whose presence here had to be an embarrassment to the family; and it was the Festival, when everybody was confessing sins and being particularly holy—
And what could he say to excuse his actions? Gran sent us a dream? Or: because we dreamed the same dream, Paisi had to go?
They hadn’t quite thought that part through. Thinking of Gran, it seemed so natural and reasonable, what they did, even the unnatural run of luck that had guided them, and guided Paisi. But the moment he thought of explaining his reasoning to his father, things appeared in a Quinalt, Guelenish light, and it was neither natural nor reasonable, as Quinalt priests would look at it. It was a Sending that had called out in their dreams. It was witchcraft, pure and simple, which was the same as wizardry: Gran was a witch, and he the son not just of a witch, but of an Amefin sorceress— he was the lasting embarrassment of his father, who never should have slept with such a woman.
So above all, he couldn’t just confess about the dream— his father might 6 5
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understand, but the moment it got to a servant’s ears, there was no telling where the news would go next or how it would take new shape. He could plead for understanding, that he never had had any sorcery about him, not once in his life, nor wanted any, and he could say that Gran must be desperate to have Sent that dream. He could hope that his father, who had known Lord Tristen himself, would look on the matter with complete sympathy—and overlook the horse, and Paisi’s going off. They had been lucky about their misdeed. He might argue they had been under a compulsion— he knew from Paisi’s stories and Gran’s that sometimes, when wizardry or magic was working, things couldn’t be helped falling into place, and even people who ordinarily didn’t have a smidge of wizardry might just go along with things, cooperating more slowly than some, but move they might, not thinking as clearly as they might.
And now the stableboy might be beaten, and the priests might get wind of his having heard Gran and remember, if they had ever forgotten, who the king’s bastard’s mother was. And he still had to ask Aewyn about the red coat, and ask if that was right, and now it was all tangled together. He couldn’t lie to Aewyn and ask for his help at the same time.
Luck, when it ran so strongly and so suddenly, could be bad luck as well as good: it could be sorcery as well as wizardry. It could even be magic, which he didn’t understand, except that it was Sihhë - born, Sihhë - made, and sometimes inherent in things, and a foolish boy could pick up something with magic about it and have very little choice or sense about what he did next. He might not be making it up about a compulsion.
He hadn’t acquired anything he could blame for his folly, had he; and he had assumed the dream had come from Gran . . .
That was the problem. He and Paisi had assumed it came from Gran, when his mother sat there in Henas’amef in her tower, silent through all his life.
But his mother’s son had been called away to his father’s palace, and his mother hated his father, did she not? She hated him beyond all measure, and all the magic that bound her to her tower prison had kept her spells inside
.
They had never been able to get out. Gran said they couldn’t: Gran said that it wasn’t her witch - work that kept his mother in her prison, but Lord Tristen himself, with magic no wizard or sorcerer could bend, let alone break.
That was what Gran had assured him when, after the earliest visit to his mother he could remember, he had had nightmares, terrible nightmares of her breaking out of her prison and turning up outside their window, in the dark.
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She could not get out, Gran had assured him. “Not her nor her wishes, neither.”
And was that not still true?
If his mother found out he had gone to his father, and if she grew very, very angry . . . who knew what strength she might fi nd?
It became more and more urgent to tell his father, and to get an older, wiser head to work on the matter. Aewyn would, he had said it to Paisi, likely sleep until noon. And maybe he didn’t even want to see Aewyn yet. He had to find the right time to tell his father and make sure no one heard . . .
not easy, to gain a completely private audience with the king of all Ylesuin, but he had to try. And meanwhile if bad luck started showering around him, he would know it was his mother; and if good, then he would be more hopeful that it was Gran’s work: that was one clue he might have to the origin of it.
The best thing to do, in any event, was take care to have a clear head and a calm heart, to tell the truth where it did good, and to say nothing to anyone at all until he could reach the king.
First was to satisfy the hunger pangs and settle himself to live alone. Paisi might be on the road with their breakfast, but there was a pitcher of drinking water in the bedchamber, and Paisi had left behind the food they had in the room for simple moments of hunger. There was a stale end of bread from two days ago, though the sausage he had thought was there, was not.
There was the fireplace poker, in the absence of a toasting stick.
He wiped down the poker, skewered a stale bit of bread, showering crumbs on the hearth. The toasted bread revived itself, there was indeed water in the pitcher, and it made a fine, even homey breakfast, making his thoughts happier, for the moment. He was warm and dry, he had found his breakfast, and ill seemed at least a little further removed from the day’s doings. Afterward he sat waiting, holding on to the three - coin luck piece that Gran had blessed and watching the snow come past the windows.
Paisi must be beyond Guelemara’s farms soon. He would be chatting with the merchant as they went, finding out all the gossip— Paisi was good at that— and tonight Paisi would be warm and safe by a fire, helping with the mules. Feiny would be warm and safe, too, with other creatures about, if he would only get along with the mules.
And when Paisi did get home, he would see that Gran had what she needed, and cook her meals, and renew the indoor wood stack, just about in time for the Bryalt festival to start, with its dances and its feasts and all the merriment in town. Paisi deserved that. Lord Crissand was a kind lord, 6 7
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who would understand perfectly well why Paisi would have come home, and he would, by the king’s own order, see that Gran had everything she needed before Paisi rode back again.
He could, perhaps, tell his father that Paisi had been so homesick for the Bryalt holidays he had sent him home. That would save him having to admit to the dream.
He could say that Paisi and he both had grown very worried for Gran, considering the storms this last several weeks, and that they had not been sure they had left enough wood, and they had not wanted to bother the king or have soldiers going out to do what they should have done in the fi rst place: the first was almost the truth, and the second fact was that Gran would never tell the truth to soldiers. Paisi was right. She would meet them at the door and say there was nothing she needed, no matter what.
Blaming it all on their worry about the weather might be a very good lie, maybe even a white lie, since it would protect everyone from blame and even save the king his father from having the priests all in a flutter. It wasn’t that bad a lie.
And Paisi had only come along with him to Guelemara in the fi rst place to take care of him, and he had never been forbidden to send Paisi back—because no one ever thought he would be sending Paisi anywhere else, he was sure, but it was so. The horse, now, being his— he could argue that he thought the horse was his to send, though it was unlikely his father meant him to keep so fine a creature when he did go home again.
At least, he said to himself, at least if his father was angry, the anger would not fall on Gran’s head or Paisi’s: it was his own at risk.
And, while truth was at issue, he would learn essential truths about his father when the first truth came out. He would discover, for one thing, whether his father would forgive him as readily as he forgave Aewyn, and laugh— Aewyn had always said that their father wouldn’t be annoyed at this or that thing, and Aewyn defied the rules with blithe unconcern. All he wanted for himself was one grace for one solitary misbehavior. It seemed within reason . . . if the king really did care what became of him.
All those years that the king had stopped to talk to Gran— he had always taken for granted that it was about him; and then he had begun to believe it was concern for his welfare. The annual gifts had persuaded him so.
But had the conversation really been regarding him?
His father had other concerns in Amefel: the cold light of day had made him reckon that into the balance. His father might have been stopping to ask Gran about his mother, not about him.
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If that were so—
maybe he would have far less patience with his misdeed.
Well, there was the truth to learn. At worst, his father would send him home and never want to see him again. But at least he would have done the right thing by Gran, and he would not have built up fond hopes about his estate in life, hopes which, if followed too far, could do greater harm to him and Gran and Paisi than he could manage now. Maybe he was meant to be a goatherd, or maybe learn Gran’s craft, if he had a smidge of his mother’s talent. He was never a wicked person. It was a choice, was it not, whether to turn wizardry to sorcery? It wasn’t a taint born into him, was it?
And if his father turned out not to want him here, then he could only make things worse for himself and Aewyn and everyone by staying too long.
If his father cast him out, there was still a hope that someday Aewyn would come visit him . . . there was their friendship, which above all else he wanted not to betray. And he didn’t think he had.
He almost wished he had gone with Paisi, back to his life in the country, where he could help Paisi on the farm and live a quiet life in a place he loved until the king and Aewyn rode by again. That was no bad fate.
Well, and if that was all done and gone— it never had been much. And if not, and his father did forgive him as freely as he would forgive Aewyn, on whom he clearly doted— well, then he’d know Gran’s extravagant hopes for his fortunes were justified, and he could trust a little more to that fragile ice.
If his father did forgive him, then he would give his father what a good father might hope to win from him . . . like trust. And love.
He would so very much like to love his father. He had come here hoping to find his fortune, to be given something to do, or be, and so far he had found that it was Aewyn who had bidden him, to give him friendship— not inconsiderable at all, by no measure insignificant, but not altogether what he had come hoping for.
If he found a father who could love him, that he could love in return, and trust . . .
Oh, it was a giddy, soaring hope. And he had just done everything a fool could do to make things go wrong, had he not? He deceived, and stole, and lied.
So here he sat on the very hinge point of his life, gifted with his new clothes he was now afraid to question with Aewyn; with new obligations—and overwhelmed with the possibilities— and having a secret he had to keep for
at least a day.
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Maybe, he thought, after he put on his best show of manners in the Quinaltine on Fast Day, maybe after he proved he could do well and be dutiful, that would be the best time to tell his father what he had done.
If he could keep the secret from spilling out of the courtyard and the stables.
From now on he must make no more mistakes, none at all. He had been Otter all his life, and that was a safe name. The one he was born with—
Elfwyn— he knew was an enemy’s name, a king’s name, the one the Marhanen kings of Ylesuin had betrayed and murdered. If only his mother had given him a name out of her own Aswydd house— a name like Heryn, even, her brother who was hanged— that would have been bad enough for his fortunes. But she had named him after a remote relative only she claimed, the last of the Sihhë kings and the source of her abrogated rights and titles as well as the Gift she had. The name had insulted his father, whose house had succeeded the Sihhë kings, it had threatened Lord Crissand, who had gained her titles, and it had outraged the Quinalt priests. It had been a wicked stroke on her part: it was clever, and it made everyone around her as uncomfortable as possible: that meant his mother was happy.
Gran had stepped in, then, and called him Otter, a country name, from a countrywoman, and it had served him all his life. But it wasn’t a city name, or a name to go about with, and among the hopes he had had in coming to Guelemara, he had hoped his father would give him a new name, a Guelen name, one the Quinalt priests would accept, one he could wear in public, and stop people whispering about him.
“There’s the king’s son,” they would say, if he had a Guelenish name like Gwieden or even Wynsan or Feisun, which every third person in town seemed to be called. He would settle for Wynsan, not— “There’s the witch’s brat.”
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