Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

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  18 / C. J. CHERRYH

  destined for, one hoped, various other ladies of the court as well as his bride.

  Amid all the ladies and maids and their stitching frames set in the advantageous light from the windows, one maid, with a deep curtsy, retrieved the damaged pearl, and another, with a deeper curtsy, snatched an imperiled length of satin fabric from his path. In what became a rapid sweep of curtsies among the women discovering his presence, he passed like a gale through a flower garden…and by sheerest chance the diminishing of ladies standing upright directed his eye to the group under the farthest of the three tall windows.

  His bride, the Lady Regent of Elwynor, stood on a bench, curiously draped in lengths of blue cloth, with a knot of ladies about her.

  Intriguing, he thought as he approached in that breaking wave of ladies rising and curtsying. It proved difficult to hold folds in unsewn velvet and curtsy at once, and the ladies’ efforts all went for naught as Lady Ninévrisë shed the velvet and descended into the sea of ladies’ wide, fashionable skirts.

  Among so many witnesses she kissed him chastely on the side of the mouth.

  “I murdered a pearl,” he said between two formal kisses.

  “Surrogate for my Lord Chancellor.” This last in a low voice as he led her off by the blue velvet mountains next the windows.

  “This man.” The precise cause of his anger, the inane and constant repetition of the phrase your late father found it good policy… followed by what had been done for the last twelve years, a recitation undaunted by the firm statement of his own will to change that policy…all of that was impossible to articulate in this listening hall of daughters and sis FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 19

  ters of great lords—northern lords at that, all of whom were involved in this contest of wills between the king and his late father’s court. “This man.” He was not yet up to coherent exposition.

  “What has he done?” Ninévrisë asked.

  “I asked for the tally of village levies. It was not my father’s policy to deal with such matters himself. Lord Brysaulin accordingly sent the tally to the lord of Murandys and not to my Master of Accounts, as I instructed. But my lord father always had it go to Murandys. Accordingly the lords, now possessed of the information I had wished to present, are delaying me, fearing all this presages a new tax, and are already resolved, Murandys to the fore, to oppose any such collection. This is beyond incompetency. It verges on treason!”

  “I should hardly think that there was any ill intent.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt the river simply flowed as it was accoustomed to flow, in all its old channels. But more than that—” He lifted a forefinger. “More than that—I asked for the accounts also to list the notable men in the villages by name and lineage. I wished the wagons listed, the houses, the weapons. No! The cattle, gods forbid, the cattle and the sheep, and the granaries were all Lord Brysaulin’s passion. There are no names in his report, let alone tally of weapons. It was not my father’s policy to gather the names in the fall, nor the account of weapons. After two months of searching, sending scribes hither and yon, and the waiting, my Lord Chancellor has gathered for me a complete account of fields, of grain and granaries down to the half measure, and of the cattle of whatever age, oh, far more complete than my father was wont, but omitted

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  the weapons, as something done two years ago, which he deemed accurate enough, and it was not my father’s policy to gather the names and the strength of the muster until spring.

  So the recording of all beasts of whatever age, with houses and granaries has every semblance of a tax assessment! The lords are uneasy with the king’s apparent interest in their revenues, how not? and how am I to know these men’s resources if I have no names or tallies? Is it Uta Uta’s-son still over Magan village in Panys, or has the old man died this summer and is his foolishly indolent and dastard son in charge, who will be devil a use when Lord Maudyn musters troops next spring?

  My father never inquired into such matters for reasons I leave to my father; but I do as my grandfather did, and with a war to fight, I think it reasonable to know the men of account in the villages as I know their lords, because I think it reasonable in me as king to know what sort of men my barons look to for their resources! I think it is of concern to the Crown whether a village be well led or indifferently led or led by an utter fool!

  I rely on such information when I rely on Panys to advance or to hold his entire contingent; and I will not do in my reign as the Lord Chancellor finds convenient, or face a set of barons inflamed by suspicions my Lord Chancellor has stirred up with his only half-following my orders!—And I want an entire tally of wagons, their kind as well as their number!”

  He was not speaking to some child…but to the Lady Regent of Elwynor across the river, a sovereign in her own right. And against a wall of obstinate, self-interested Guelen opposition to his will, the Lady Regent of Elwynor was a calm, sweet, sure, and unassailable voice on his side. “He will simply have to obtain the names and weapons and the rest of it, my FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 21

  lord, and that will correct the impression he might have given.”

  “The snow will fall and we’ll be holding muster in blizzards!

  Pray, is that a man, sir, or a snowdrift?”

  “There is still time, adequate at least to amend the list.”

  “And with a list I wanted done with no extraordinary fuss!

  Secrecy was my aim. Quiet proceedings. —Come with me.

  We’ll flee to Marisal, break a bowl together and set ourselves up as simple farmers.”

  The Lady Regent must not, by treaty, attempt to advise him in the monarchy of Ylesuin: the marriage contract had stipulated likewise that he would not intervene in Elwynor.

  It was a noble notion of dual reigns over two allied realms, give or take the inconvenient fact that her capital across the river was threatened by rebels. But besides all other reasons, they loved each other…at least…they were hoping to love one another: at this early date they were merely, hopelessly, smitten.

  To all of this the maids and ladies-in-waiting demurely listened, so solemn, so seemingly occupied with their stitching; and if their being within earshot served him and her at all well, the ladies would gossip back to their brothers and fathers that the king had no intention of a tax, that Lord Brysaulin had bungled the accounts, that it was indeed wagons and village musters at issue.

  And if they were uncommonly efficient at their talebearing, why, the king and his intended might even enjoy their harvesttide ale without conspiracy, or at least with the buzzing of some entirely new false and utterly inane rumor, of a muster and general war by snowfall, for instance.

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  Meanwhile the gray eyes that looked back at him danced with complete comprehension, thank the gods, a support that propped up his sanity and stayed the true Marhanen temper—not the best trait he had from his sire and grandsire. The mouth he longed to kiss was touched with astringent humor she would by no means launch here, either, in the hearing of the selfsame barons’ daughters: oh, they were both on their best behavior. And let the barons’ daughters report the Regent had been discreet and seemly. Let them report Her Grace had but meekly counseled the king to be reasonable with his barons and watch her grow in their esteem—a proper, seemly woman seeking no authority over Guelen women and their secret hierarchies, oh, aye, let them all, each and individually think so. But believe, too, in their bitter jealousy. He caught the look of Ryssand’s daughter Artisane above her stitching frame, and saw the fox-faced chit color and duck her chin.

  “We should wait till spring to become farmers,” Ninévrisë

  said in all sobriety, and in a voice just low enough to make the eavesdropping maids strain for possible bits and pieces of Lord Brysaulin’s fate. “Beginning a farm in the winter, I fear we would starve.”

  “There is that,” he conceded.

  “Fifteen days,” she
reminded him, which was the number of the days they had to endure until their wedding—the consummation of a treaty as well as a bridal bed, and on both, a stamp of priestly approval. The blessing of the priests would set the king’s consort beyond petty gossip and let the two of them, who ached to touch, do more than let fingertips meet in front of jealous (and spurned) young women.

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  Meanwhile fault-finding, book-wielding, legalistic priests, worst of all his inconveniences, were sniffing everywhere about the Guelesfort, also allied to various houses by blood and gold.

  And now the war, which had been advancing, foundered on an old man’s habit.

  “Gods send we reach the fifteenth day with my chancellor yet unslaughtered.”

  “He is an old man. A fine old man. He was kind to me.”

  “A faithful man.” The royal temper fell with that reminder of a small, dutiful kindness when the court had been cold and uncertain in its welcome to his bride and ally. He was left with the ashes of his anger. And the accounts still in the wrong, hostile hands. “He served my father well as Lord Chamberlain.

  He served me well until I came home to Guelessar—good gods, he kept the entire realm in order in a difficult time, with wit and goodwill, and for that I owe him gratitude, but good and beneficent gods, why will he not simply read the order I send him? I wrote it fair. —But, oh, I know, I know exactly his ways.

  Through all my father’s reign, when he dealt chiefly with Guelessar, we have done the harvest tally in Guelessar approaching harvesttide. So this must extend the selfsame inquiry to all Ylesuin and it must be granaries we wish to inspect, not wagons and bowstrings. I would trust Brysaulin to be honest, and to have all virtues of a good man, but, gods, even so, if I do not strangle me that man before Midwinter—”

  “Hush, hush.” She laid a finger on his chin, and, thus close to him, whispered, “You must go to Brysaulin, instruct him again. Be patient. You are always patient.”

  “I am Marhanen! I am never patient. Plague on Brysaulin. I faint for wit and converse about other than 24 / C. J. CHERRYH

  store of pikes and oats. Will you dine with me tonight in chambers—a gathering of old friends? I shall call Tristen, too.

  He’s out riding. I’ll have him in by sundown if I need send troops to find him.”

  Ninévrisë’s eyes had changed from solemn listening to laughter, that quickly; and the gray eyes that sometimes had hints of violets (it was the first image he had seen, painted on ivory, and always what he remembered) sparkled and went thoughtful. Her voice sank very low, to escape the listeners.

  “Am I the prey tonight or is it Tristen? Policy must attend this festive mood. You are stalking someone.”

  “Good lady!” He laid a hand on his breast, above the Marhanen Dragon, worked in gold. “I am suspect?”

  “Today since dawn you have held close converse with the captain of your guard, the Patriarch of the Quinalt.” One finger and the next marked the tally. “Your brother the duke of Guelessar, and your brother’s priest, besides a converse again with Idrys, with Captain Gwywyn, and with Captain Kerdin—I discount your tailor—”

  “Your spies are everywhere!”

  “You ensconce me in this nest of women all with ambitions, all wishing to persuade me to confide in them, and wonder that I know exactly the object of your inquiry, who was riding to Drysham today—”

  “Cressitbrook. You don’t know everything.”

  “—with his guard. It is he, is it not? Has Tristen done something amiss?”

  “Tonight,” he said, with a glance at the women in the distance, and with his voice lowered.

  “I hear it all, you know. The Warden of Ynefel is out spying on the land. He converses with the horses, FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 25

  quite dire and lengthy discourses, and likely with the sheep.

  His birds fly over the land and bring him news from every quarter…”

  “His damned pigeons congregate on the ledge and on the porch of the Quinaltine just opposite, where they refine their aim on the Quinaltine steps, therein is the magical offense.

  Winter’s coming. He feeds them. Why should they fly farther afield?” He had heard enough, today, of the Quinaltine steps.

  And of his bride’s unorthodoxy…and her scandalous single petticoat, especially in the wedding gown. “Join me tonight. A small supper, a pleasant, quiet evening, no one but ourselves and Tristen. And Emuin. We shall invite Emuin.”

  “Oh, that will set tongues a-wagging.”

  Doubtless it would—a Teranthine father, the king’s old tutor, was entirely acceptable; a wizard was not; but Emuin was both.

  And, damn the gossip, he missed their quiet suppers, and their days in Amefel. He missed them so much that those Amefin days, which he had once considered exile, now appeared to him in a golden glow of memory, a time when he had had few but faithful confidants every night at supper, when his table had been solely for food and intimate talk, not tiresome sessions with priests and clerks and lords who wished his brother were king. Even the banquets of state in the great hall in Henas’amef had been intimate, by comparison to the echoing hall of the Dragon Throne, where he now held court.

  The region before the throne was a gilt-and-ivory battlefield of policy wherein every move and every strategic alliance had been laid down by his father and now must be fought and refought and reforged by an unpopular successor. His digestion suffered in consequence, and while he had as yet found no 26 / C. J. CHERRYH

  gray hairs among the gold of his carefully clipped beard, nor a lasting crease on his young brow, he looked for them daily—even longed for them as a means to impress authority on the barons. He could no longer ride abroad, not with the press of royal business. He had grooms to exercise his horses.

  He could not find time for his father’s hounds, who were growing paunches. He could not so much as sit in the royal bothtub on most days without papers to sign, arguments to hear, justice to do, or some petition of the Quinalt about Tristen’s damned pigeons.

  “Let them clatter about it,” he said to his bride-to-be. “Let them have a merry round of it. There’s Llymarish cheese and Panan apples stewed up with spices. There’s Guelen ham and Amefin sausages and the red wine from Imor as well as Guelen ale. I had it all carted in and set by for harvesttide. I shall serve it up tonight, just the few of us.”

  “Seducer,” said his bride. Fingers touched fingers. Oh, very gladly would he have touched more.

  It was an intrigue. Everything must be, in these day of his new accession and the making of an Elwynim alliance-by-mar-riage.

  And she saw very clearly that it was Tristen he wished to speak to, involving neither pigeons nor the census nor the desperation that, indeed, sent him here for refuge. He saw the wolves closing on him in this latest folly and he had interests to defend.

  But it was, besides a necessity arrived upon him, also an opportunity grown all too rare, that he gather around him the truest hearts in the court. In the press and clatter of his father’s courtiers attempting to assure their influence and those who had been in less favor with his father attempting to gain from him what his

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  father never would have given them, he had lost the peace that he had not valued when he had had it. Yes, the king would have a live wizard and a reputedly dead Sihhë-lord at his table tonight.

  The king should have things entirely to his liking at least now and again.

  A fox traversed the hillside, a quick whisk of red and buff: Lusin noticed it first, and called Tristen’s attention to it, with the remark that all such creatures were uncommonly fine-furred this year. But that was a moment’s distraction. Uwen and the men, Lusin and the rest, had fallen to discussing Liss, the chestnut mare Uwen rode for the day. The stables had her up for sale, at a high price—and Uwen could not, would not. He refused such an extravagance on principle.

  “You should buy her,” Tristen said for the hundredth time, and Uwen, who sl
ipped Liss apples right along with those he brought for his regular mount Gia and his heavy horse Cass, said, for the hundredth time, “It’s too high, m’lord. Too high by far,—not for the mare, but for me to be spending…”

  “I say you should,” Tristen objected.

  “It’s very good in ye, m’lord, but ’at’s household money, which I ain’t for spendin’.”

  “You need another horse.”

  “If I need another horse, it’s a good stout-legged gelding I’d be usin’ next spring an’ not bring Gia across the river. An’ I can wait for a foal of hers when things settle. ’T is pure folly to be buying any forty-silver mare, m’lord, the likes of me—”

  “A captain.”

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  “As ye say, m’lord, but a poor ’un.”

  “You like her,” Tristen said, and true, Uwen’s hand had stolen to Liss’s neck, and his hands said yes while his look argued glum refusal.

  “Ain’t practical,” was Uwen’s word on it. “Ain’t in the least practical.”

  The argument always came to that.

  “She moves well,” Lusin said.

  “Aye,” Uwen said, sighing, “but too fine for me.”

  And so it usually went. Uwen fell to discussing a foal from his bay mare, and her fine points, and the mileposts came.

  Tristen, distracted, let the conversation slip past him.

  It was not that the world in general had taken on that hollow grayness of wizardry at work. He felt no insistence of ghosts, and his perceptions stayed anchored easily and solidly to the road while the men talked of horses. All signs assured him that the world was in good order. Yet since his flight on the hilltop, his furtive peek from moment to moment into Amefel, he kept slipping just slightly toward that grayness both he and wizards could reach.

  He had begun to look for something, he knew not what, searching with an awareness dulled by doubts and distracted by colors and movement and the occasionally puzzling discussion of foal-getting around him. That gray place was wizardry, or something like it, and he was reluctant to use it. Emuin strongly warned him against it. He ought to take interest in the business of mares and foals and all the disturbing questions of life beginning—but this summer, Uwen said, and this summer remained gray to him, without detail or shape or substance.