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She was angry at what he said, but she might think on it. Perhaps she had already thought on it. Doubtless she had had ample time to think, sitting in a Teranthine nunnery in Guelessar with no fine gowns, no servants, no books, and no one who cared to please her.

And in this moment of her retreat, he pursued, with a question which had troubled him since summer.

"You tried to kill Emuin," he asked her, for someone at summer's end had attacked Emuin and left him lying in a pool of blood. He could think of no one more likely than Orien Aswydd, who had commanded all the resources of Henas'amef. "Didn't you?"

She gave him no answer, but he had the notion he had come very near the truth: Orien or someone sworn to her. And he could think of fortress of dragons.html

many, many connections she had had among the servants and the nobility of the province, one of whom had perhaps stayed more loyal than most.

"Lord Cuthan's gone to Elwynor," he said. "Did you know that?"

Perhaps she had not known it. Perhaps she was dismayed to learn that particular resource was no longer within her reach, when he was sure Cuthan had something to do with Orien Aswydd. Perhaps through Cuthan she had even known about the proposed rising against the king, and the Elwynim's promised help.

But she said nothing.

He tried a third question. "Did
you
bring the attack on the nuns?"

It was as much as if to ask:
Did you wish your freedom from the nuns,
and, Did you grow desperate because the plan had failed
?

And:
Did it work finally as you wished
?

It all might have shot home, but Orien never met his eyes, and he somewhat doubted she heard… or that she knew any other thing. He only wished that if it were possible she could find another path for her gift, she would do differently. He wished it on her with gentle force, and with kindness, and she stepped back as if he had grossly assaulted her. The white showed all around her eyes.

"I wish you well," he said in the face of her temper, and included Tarien in the circle of his will. "I assure you I do, as Hasufin never did."

"You take my lands," Orien cried, "and wish me well in my poverty!

How dare you!"

It was a question, and he knew the answer with an assurance that, yes, he dared, and had the right, and did. The gray space intruded, roiled and full of storm; and in it, he did not retreat: Orien did. In the World, she recoiled a step, and another, and a third, until she met the wall. Tarien rose from her chair, awkward in the heaviness of her body, and turned to reach her sister, still holding to the chair.

"If Aséyneddin had won," Orien said. "If you had died—"

"You promised Cefwyn loyalty," Tristen said, "and you never meant it. Do you think you'd lie to
Hasufin
, and have what you wanted? If you lied and he lied—what in the world were you expecting to fortress of dragons.html

happen?"

She had no idea, he decided sadly. Nothing at all Unfolded to him to make sense of Orien, but he suspected Orien's thoughts constantly soared over the stepping-stones to the far bank of her desires, never reckoning where she had to set her feet to take her there.

Flesh and bone as well as spirit, Mauryl had said to him, when he had been about to plunge down a step while looking at something across the room. He could hear the crack of Mauryl's staff on incontrovertible stone, to this very hour. Look where you're going, Mauryl would say.

It was in some part sad that Orien had had no Mauryl to advise her.

But on a deeper reflection, perhaps it was as well for all of them that Hasufin's counsel had never been other than self-serving.

And she never answered him now, never confessed her expectations, possibly never knew quite what they were or why she continually fell short of her mark.

"What do you hope I should do?" he asked them. "I might send you to Elwynor."

"Send us to Elwynor?" Orien echoed him, and drew herself up with a breath, a shake of her head, a spark in the eye. "Oh, do.
Do
, and you send king Cefwyn's child to Tasmôrden!"

Cefwyn's child
, he said to himself.

A man and a woman made a child together, and would it be with one of the stableboys Tarien had done this magic?

No. It made perfect sense. Now her defiance assumed a purpose, and her coming here disclosed a reason. So did the nuns' deaths, at a far remove: whatever men had killed those hapless women, he knew that greater currents were moving in the world, and that none of them was safe.

"And when will the child be born?" he asked, already having clues to that answer.

"I'm eight months now," Tarien said, and settled into her chair like a queen onto her throne.

Nine was the term of a child that would live. So Uwen had said.

Three times wizards' three, this term of a child. Wizardry set great fortress of dragons.html

store by numbers, and moments, and times.

"And have you sent this news to Cefwyn?"

"No," Orien said. And Tarien:

"We kept it our secret.
My
secret. Even when he sent us away. It never showed until fall, and under all these robes, and then the winter cloaks… only my nurse knew."

"Yet the Guelens came," Orien said with a bitter edge. "So perhaps the nuns did see, and perhaps he does know, this good, this honest king of yours, despite all you say."

Tristen shook his head. They were back to that, never resolved. "No.

I know he wouldn't."

"What, a Marhanen king refuse a murder? To prevent an Amefin claim on the throne, to keep our secret a secret—come now, what might not our Cefwyn do?"

"He didn't do this," he said with unshaken confidence. "He doesn't know. He wouldn't harm you."

"Come now. If he knew—oh, indeed, if he knew. You," Orien said,

"who
are
good, and honest—all these things… you'd stick at murder.

You have virtues. But three generations of the Marhanen has taught this province the Marhanen do
not
!"

"And this is his child."

She gave him a startled, uncertain look at that saying.

"A child with the wizard-gift," he added, for in the storm he had heard sometimes two lives, and sometimes and faintly, three.

"An Aswydd child," Orien said, "with
Marhanen
blood."

"My child." It was a small voice. A near whisper from Tarien, that still managed a hint of defiance. "And he's right. I think he
is
right; they didn't come from Cefwyn."

"Oh," Orien hissed, "now we believe him again. Now we think him full of virtue and chivalry, this lover of ours. A Marhanen
king
would not hesitate to rip that child from your womb and destroy it, never doubt it. But not here. Not from Lord Tristen's hands. Tristen would never allow it, our gentle Tristen…"

He liked nothing he heard, least of all Orien Aswydd appealing to his fortress of dragons.html

kindness, and now he wished he had called Emuin to this conference.

But it was too late. He saw Orien's confidence far from diminished and her malevolence far from chastened.

"You think
you've
done all this," Tristen said, for she seemed to have no grasp of any other state of affairs. "You let Hasufin Heltain past the wards, you dealt with wizardry, and you think it was all yours?

The child has the gift. If he's Cefwyn's, he might be king. And you dealt with Hasufin Heltain! You know what he did at Althalen, you know Emuin cast him out then, and you know what he wants most of all—is that what you want? This child is his best chance since Althalen!"

Tarien had her hand on her belly, and she understood his meaning—at last and very least one of the Aswydds heard his warning, she, who held within herself all the consequence of Hasufin's ambition, and could not escape it, could not on her own prevent Hasufin's taking the child as his way into the world of Men.

"Don't listen to him!" Orien said. "Pay no attention. It's only Cefwyn's interest he cares for, nothing, nothing at all for the babe's sake! Your child will be
king
!"

Tarien pulled away and leaned against her chair, arms folded protectively over her belly..

"Tarien!" Orien insisted, but Tristen drew Tarien's eyes to him.

"Don't listen," he said.

"Amefel is
ours
!" Orien hissed. "
We
are the aethelings. We are the royals and we
were
royal before the Sihhë came down from the Hafsandyr! This land
belongs
to her son!"

It was indeed her claim, and a claim with some justice. Tristen considered that, considered the angry determination in Orien's eyes, and her wishes, and the strength they had. "You can't," he said, to all her wishes. "Not alone. I wish not. Emuin wishes not.
Mauryl
wished not, and I don't think you can wish otherwise to any good at all, Lady Orien. Your servants have gone, Lord Cuthan's across the river—Lord Edwyll's dead, and his heir
is
the aetheling now."

"Crissand!" The voice shuddered with scorn.

"The Witch of Emwy said it, and I say it. Did Tasmôrden promise you what he promised Cuthan? There was no army. There never was fortress of dragons.html

an army. He lied to Cuthan. He lied to all the earls, and Edwyll died of the cups in your cupboard… or was it your wish?"

Orien's eyes had widened somewhat, at least in some inner recognition.

"Was it your wish?" Tristen asked her. "Your wish, and not the cups?"

Orien's brows lifted somewhat. "The wine. My sister and I had no inclination to die as our brother died. We preferred
that
to exile."

It was not all she preferred to exile: death here, death in her Place, as the Zeide was: foreseeing that danger, even then, he had advised Cefwyn to banish her and the Aswydds of the name. Both dead and alive they had gone out the gate, to prison and burial elsewhere.

"And Cuthan is in Elwynor," Orien said, "with the latest usurper. And
you
sit here. The mooncalf, they called you. The fool. Mauryl's hatchling."

"I was," he said.

"And Bryn?" she asked.

She knew, he was sure now, that Tasmôrden had promised invasion: she likely knew everything Cuthan had done. Messages
had
gotten to Anwyfar, and she
had
expected a rising against the Crown. But she had not known anything since Cuthan's flight: that said something of her sources, and of Cuthan's slight wizard-gift, remote now from her.

It was clear that whispers had gone on in the gray space that neither he nor Emuin had heard. In Guelessar, in the autumn, he had rarely reached out to Amefel. Emuin had forbidden it.

"What of Bryn?" she demanded to know. 'Drusenan of Modeyneth is Lord Bryn now." It did not please her. But she turned her face elsewhere and wrapped her wishes inward, tightly held, and he left them unpursued.

"So busy you've been," she said, gazing into distance. "Gathering an army in Amefel, all those tents arrayed outside my walls… a winter campaign, is it to be? All for Cefwyn. For Cefwyn's
heir
." Her eyes lanced toward him, direct and challenging. "For his firstborn son—his firstborn
Aswydd
son—a kingdom."

"It is a son," he said, for Tarien's child was male, and would be firstborn. That was the truth, and only then knew with full force how fortress of dragons.html

it would hurt Ninévrisë.

And that son, not Ninévrisë's, would harm the treaty with Elwynor.

It would harm Cefwyn—the northern lords would reject a child of Aswydd and Marhanen blood out of hand. So would the Elwynim.

"A son," Orien said. One set of plans dashed in what he told her, she gathered up others, and recovered herself. "A bastard, he may be, but a
royal, firstborn
bastard."

Bastard
was a child without ceremony, unrecognized. Bastard was a child no one would own.

But that was not so. Someone owned this child.
Tarien
did. Ta-rien already held it protected in her arms, her eyes wide with alarm while Orien's flashed with defiance of him. They were twins, of one mind until that moment: of one ambition, until that heartbeat. He had divided them. The child had.
Cefwyn
had, for Tarien's feeling was not Orien's, and the realization of that shivered through the gray space with the kiss of a knife's sharp edge.

He was sorry for their pain, but he was not sorry for Orien.

And he sealed himself against all their entreaties and their objections. If anyone could bend Orien Aswydd, it might be Tarien. If anyone could sway her, it might be her twin, given time, and a quieter hour. There was the hope for them: Cefwyn's son he could not reach, not now, not without harm.

"I'll ask about the gowns," he said, intending to leave.

"Servants," Orien said. Her lips made a thin white line. Her eyes held storm that, prudently, did not break.

"Respect the wards," he said, "and respect the guards."

"And if we don't? Would you harm my sister and the child?" she asked, with the clear expectation he would not.

It was the truth. She expected to have won the argument, and to have her way, and she would not.

"I don't intend her harm," he said with a glance toward Tarien, whose eyes met his in dread. "I can't say what
she
means to do," he said directly to Tarien. "Take care. Take care for yourself."

And with that he walked out, sealed against the roiling confusion they made in the gray space.

fortress of dragons.html

He realized now that Emuin had been listening for the last few moments, subtle and stealthy as Emuin was. But he did not acknowledge that he knew, not this close to the twins' apartment. He gathered up Uwen and his own guard, who had been talking with the Guelens at the nearer station.

"They ask for their gowns," he said to Uwen. "Do you know what happened to them?"

"I fear they've gone, m'lord, I'd imagine they have."

"The servants?"

"I'd say. His Majesty was at Lewenbrook, His Highness bein' here didn't know one man from another, comin' an' goin'—" When Efanor had been in charge of Henas'amef, Uwen meant, and sure enough there had been no few of the servants fled when Cefwyn came back.