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Corswyndam Lord Ryssand reined his fine chestnut in at the steps and made his bow. And with the banner of Ryssand was another, smaller banner, one which most of Ylesuin would not recognize: the banner of the earl of Bryn, out of Amefel.

Never mind the man, still in the saddle as if he headed some invading army—or trusted Ryssand gave him the ducal privilege of staying ahorse in his king's presence—had no longer any right to the display of those colors.

'My lord king," Corswyndam said loudly enough for half the square to hear. "My lady. My lord prince."

Oh, that was calculated, a salute to Ninévrisë, the Royal Consort.

Corswyndam had moved heaven and earth to see Ninévrisë treated as an enemy instead of an honored and queenly bride. By the protocols, she being merely the Royal Consort, he might have omitted her from the reckoning entirely, and yet he did not. He saluted her, he saluted Prince Efanor, whom he courted for a son-in-law. There was no piece of mischief in Ylesuin that did not have Lord Ryssand somewhere fortress of dragons.html

involved, and all this public courtesy, all this show was a challenge to his king to accuse him of any of it—an attempt to interject the very scandal Cefwyn had avoided into this most happy of moments.

Cefwyn strode to the edge of the Quinaltine steps and set fists on hips. "You left our lands and our court at our express invitation,"

Cefwyn shouted down at him. "Now you presume to return without so much as asking our leave. Do you come to honor the new bride? If so, I find your timing damned ill considered, to her, to the noble houses here displayed, and to the Crown, sir!"

"Concern for the realm brought me, Your Majesty." Corswyndam swept a second bow. "And the honoring of my oath to Your Majesty, to uphold the king, the realm, and the Holy Quinalt! Things I've learned dictated I ride with scarcely a guard, in all haste, before intemperate influences might bring worse weather on the roads! And forgive my intrusion into this festive occasion, but I ask a hearing, Your Majesty, of utmost urgency. Your Majesty has been misled—"

"
We
have been misled?" It was clear, now, by the colors of Bryn, what Ryssand dared with this public show, and letting the famed Marhanen temper out, Cefwyn strode a step lower and pointed at Earl Cuthan of Bryn and at Lord Parsynan, faces he knew, one from his stay in Amefel and the other because he himself had appointed the scoundrel viceroy of Amefel on Ryssand's recommendation. "There's a pairing straight from hell! The man who would not be duke of Amefel, who betrayed his own people and contrived with traitors, and the scoundrel who slaughtered a nobleman's guard for his own damned petty spite! Are these blackguards under arrest? Is
that
the gift you bring me, two wretches fit for hanging? For
that
, I may be appeased!"

The two in question held back, and Parsynan retreated a step, looking starkly afraid. But no accusation scathed Corswyndam or brought a decent blush or a pallor to his face.

"The gift I bring Your Majesty is the truth, the much-abused truth, that—"

"Oh, come now,
come
, sir!
Ryssand
defends the truth? If you think it resides in these two miscreants, you need to have a lad to guide your steps!"

"Your Majesty, I bring you peace! Peace with Elwynor!"

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"
Damn
you, I say! And damn these two traitors!"

But Ryssand had gotten his blade past Cefwyn's guard, and the poison had reached ready ears. Prichwarrin Lord Murandys, at Cefwyn's elbow, rushed to plead, loudly, before all witnesses, noble and common: "I beg Your Majesty hear him."

"Indeed," said Lord Isin, from his other side. "Indeed,
peace
with Elwynor, Your Majesty. Hear him."

"I know the source," Cefwyn began to say, but then Lord Murandys cast himself to his knee on the icy landing and seized Ninévrisë's hand.

"Intercede, Your Grace, for the saving of your subjects and the king's mercy."

Cefwyn was shocked to silence, but Ninévrisë backed a step and tried to rescue her hand, all but slipping on the ice. Isin besought Efanor's arm in similar plea, but Efanor's bodyguard interposed an armored side, diverting the old man in alarm. A man slipped, guards reached for weapons, and all manner of mischief might have broken out, except Idrys called out sharply, "Hold! All hold!" and set an armored presence beside the royal family, arraying the Dragon Guard and all their weapons at his command.

And still Prichwarrin Lord Murandys, father of the forgotten bride, remained on his knees, a public scandal, and Ninévrisë, recovered from her near fall, refusing to grant him grace.

"Get up," Cefwyn said harshly.

Prichwarrin rose stiffly and obediently to his feet, and Cefwyn turned a baleful stare down at the armed company.

Artisane was there, too, that cloaked woman on the piebald mare, riding sidesaddle in her many-petticoated skirts, and she was a presence as unwelcome in Ninévrisë's women's court as her father was in his own. Inside the Guelesfort, out of public view, he could order Ryssand's throat cut, if he wished the breach with the north irrevocable—and Prichwarrin at the head of his enemies.

But such was the tangle of relations between the Marhanen kings and this most powerful of the dukes of Ylesuin that he could not set ducal heads side by side on Guelemara's gate. He had not formally banished Lord Ryssand: he had sent him forth in private disgrace fortress of dragons.html

precisely because he could not afford a public breach; and he had then countenanced Ryssand's pursuit of an alliance with his house, namely Efanor, trying to patch up the northern region's relations with the Crown—because without the north there was damned little left of Ylesuin.

"Peace, of course, is what we all desire," Cefwyn said at last, "and you shall have your hearing—at
my
convenience! Now clear the streets before these good people demand your arrest! You've disrupted the festivities."

"When shall I see Your Majesty?" Ryssand asked.

"Obey your king!" Idrys said. "Withdraw!"

"At Your Majesty's command," Ryssand said, with another deep bow and with a faint smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Shall I camp at the town gate in disgrace? Or shall I have my residence in the Guelesfort at my disposal?"

Camp at the gate, was on Cefwyn's tongue, and, Sweep the steps of them, close behind. But Ryssand was too canny a campaigner, and the presence of the crowd, the hired tongues that would surely wag the instant this confrontation ended and spread whatever rumors Ryssand ordered, all forced control over the Marhanen temper.

"Sleep in the stables, for all I care, but—" Now, he looked beyond, to his people, acknowledging their witness of this unseemly display.

"—take heed of rumor, and mind the source! The words of those who have fallen from grace for murder and treason in their own province are not to be trusted in Guelemara! We will listen and we will hear, but we will not be swayed by the interests of murderers!"

He descended then two steps closer to Ryssand:

"You will have your audience," Cefwyn said in no good humor, and for immediate ears only. "And if these two you've brought affront me as they affronted the duke of Amefel, their heads will sit on spikes on the town gate! Let them look to their lives, I say! And I place their behavior at your account, Ryssand! Look to it, and let them not offend me as they offended Amefel!"

"Your Majesty." Ryssand bowed in the saddle, and bowed again, and a third time before he turned his horse about and rode at the head of his small column—the banners of Ryssand and Bryn happening in fortress of dragons.html

the process to seize the precedence over the Dragon Banner of the Marhanen.

For that reason and in full consciousness of appearances, Cefwyn did not descend the steps to tail onto the lord of Ryssand's procession to the Guelesfort. He stood fast on the steps, with Idrys beside him, with Ninévrisë, with Efanor, Lord Murandys and Lord Panys and Lord Isin, and the bride and groom.

"Damn him," Cefwyn said.

"This is my wedding!" Luriel cried, in tears. "This is my wedding, does anyone remember?
This is my wedding
!"

"Be still!" her uncle said sharply. It was a wedding already marginally scandalous, not alone since the Patriarch's murder at the last attempt; all the world knew the niece of Lord Murandys had been in the royal bed.

And now at the outburst from Murandys, the young groom, leaving his bride, went several steps aside to confer with his father, Lord Panys, leaving Luriel alone before the scandal-loving crowd at the foot of the steps.

Cefwyn cast a look at Efanor, the while, wondering how Efanor had taken what had just transpired, and whether the marriage proposal between Efanor and Artisane had assumed an extreme advantage at the moment or whether he should take the excuse of his offense against Ryssand to consider the marriage entirely out of the question.

It had seemed advantageous from time to time, Efanor being in no wise gullible and having his own notions how to contain Ryssand's ambition; now, among a dozen times else, he doubted the wisdom of it and asked himself how he could have been so foolish.

Ninévrisë's hand sought his, and her fingers pressed on his as if she would drive her own good sense into his hot-tempered Marhanen head: nothing precipitate, nothing foolish, she silently counseled him.

The baron foolish enough to challenge his grandfather to that degree would have gone to the block, so he said to himself, but those raw, rough times of beginning a kingdom were done: his own reign was a rule of reason—so he hoped. Yet he asked himself now how the populace saw him, whether he had won this encounter or whether Ryssand had.

But on the thought of his grandfather's methods he left Ninévrisë, fortress of dragons.html

took the bride's hand, and brusquely led her to the groom and seized his hand. He held up their joined hands then to the witness of all the crowd, many of whom had by now forgotten they had come to witness a wedding.

That was what they had come to see. Had they forgotten it?

"A king's penny apiece!" he shouted. It was the third penny the Wedding had cost the treasury, but it was a grand gesture, it distracted the crowd into wild cheering, and he left it to Idrys and his capable staff to marshal the crowd into order and to the treasury to nnd pennies enough.

It was cheaper than bloodshed and the entanglements of a ducal execution.

Kiss the bride," he ordered young Rusyn, the groom, and as Rusyn obliged, there rose cheers and laughter from the crowd. The union of two young nobles was far more understandable to the people, far closer to their hearts than the constant feuds close to the throne. "Give us a diversion," he added, for the young man's ears alone, and Rusyn, nothing loath, gave him that and more, leaving his new bride breathless, to the utter and noisy delight of the crowd. The traditional cheers went up, and when Cefwyn left the bride and groom to their moment of public display, and reached his intimates and his wife, he passed only a glance to Idrys, who understood every order implicit in that moment's stare and went to be sure all the necessary things happened.

The duke of Ryssand's little entourage had meanwhile had time to clear the square by now, the crowd had been entertained, and now the bridal procession could get under way without looking like the tail of Ryssand's.

"Ring the bells!" he said, realizing that the bells were the source of the silence, and a lay brother ran to relay that order.

"Trumpeters!" the Guard sergeant shouted. "Way for His Majesty an'

Her Grace!"

They descended the icy steps without mishap, save one of the lay brothers went sliding in unseemly fashion, to the rough laughter of a now good-humored crowd.

For those who gathered omens from ceremonies, however, this one fortress of dragons.html

had not had the best beginning. Everything about the marriage of Luriel and Rusyn was second-best, from the choice of mates to the once-worn wedding finery, which had had to be recovered from soot and, one suspected, even traces of blood the common folk now called sacred.

Not the best-omened wedding, but gods, it was a relief all the same to have the matter done with. Panys was assured of a foothold in Murandys, where the Crown needed a loyal man. Ryssand had timed his arrival for after the ceremony, thank the gods, not to have disrupted the wedding altogether, and Lord Murandys was likely of mixed feelings about the choice of Luriel's wedding for Ryssand's return—Ryssand correctly predicting there would be no bloody confrontation and no arrest to mar a wedding.

But since Murandys had made the alliance with Panys as the way out of royal displeasure, during Ryssand's forced retreat from the court…

Murandys might be asking himself now whether Ryssand's choice of moments might be a veiled threat against him. It might have been premature, Murandys might now think, to have made an alliance with a friend of the monarch: Ryssand must have some secret behind this move.

So Cefwyn thought, too; and that was the
other
reason not to order Ryssand's arrest. There was more to it than appeared, and its name was very likely Cuthan of Bryn, and Tristen, gods save them all.

And peace with Tasmôrden? He began to guess the sum of matters, and said not a word to Ninévrisë on the matter of this
peace
Ryssand spoke of. She had heard as well as he, and knew no more than he, but neither of them could like the source of it: there was no agreement possible with Tasmôrden in Elwynor that did not preclude Ninévrisë's return as lady Regent—and that condition was entirely unacceptable.

Beyond unacceptable—it was foolish even to contemplate it.

Tasmôrden was forsworn, a rebel against Ninévrisë's father. What faith could they put in another oath?

Not mentioning the faith in Ryssand.

So they walked over the now well-trampled snow, with evidence of horses roused out from a well-fed evening before: they walked, a royal procession, a wedding, over snow no longer clean, thanks to Ryssand—but becoming so, in the steady fall of white.