His heart skipped a beat a little skip, true, and he would not betray the fact, nor mend his posture, no, not for this, which he began to suspect as some priestly game with him. He did not think it was Emuinʼs doing. It had the smell of a priestly matter, illicit and heretical practice, meaning the Bryalt faith, dominant in this province, could again be afoul of the orthodox Quinaltines, who had probably come a long and dusty ride from the capital to urge some obscure point of theology and rant to the Prince about cults and conspiracies on the borders.
But that it came through Emuin set it above the inconsequential and the purely theological.
He shut the book, left it idly in his lap, and cast a narrow look at his old tutor. Well, old master. I take it the pig-thief came bearing this. And of course I must be roused out most urgently.
He claims it as his, Highness.
Not likely his, Cefwyn thought, the youth being a youth, and lacking in every sense the plausibility of the occasional graybeard who gulled the villagers and roused if merely for a season Amefin expectations and Amefin disaffections from the Crown.
He considered Aman and Nedras, the gate-guards who were the anomaly in this gathering of court and guards not the restrainers of the culprit, but those whose part in this doubtless intrigue-ridden malfeasance he had yet to hear. They were the ones who had brought with them, as he supposed, this head-hanging, straw-bedecked youth, the unwilling center of all this commotion. He would have thought, absent the gate-guards in the affair, that the Quinalt and the Teranthines were at odds over some point of abstract logic but, gods, he had thought better of Emuin than to wake him for some priestly rivalry; and the matter did look to be some arrival at the Zeide gate.
Man, he said, curiosity aroused, pig-thief. Look up. Look up here. Whose book is this?
The prisoner had been considerably knocked about. He seemed to need the guardsʼ holding him on his feet, and needed a shake from Aman to have his attention.
That brought his head up, jolted him to alertnessand for a moment in Cefwynʼs awareness there was nothing nothing but that pale gaze.
Fear, Cefwyn thought, heart racing in his breast, his sense derived of judicial experience reasserting reason. It was fear he saw in most faces that came before him under such compulsion; far rarer, however, was the courage to look him in the eyes; and, he was ready to swear, although he had never met it in this court
He saw innocence. Absolute, stark, terrifying innocence.
He had moved without thinking had dropped his knee off the arm without knowing it; had held his next breath and feared the whole assembly in the hall had seen, did see. He was not accustomed to be so moved by anyone, and he was vexed with himself. He felt no threat in the stare, only an uncanny, helpless attraction toward this creature, an attraction all but physical, unprecedented, and intimate, so acute that he felt exposed in that motion of his heart. He had never been so set aback in his life; and he was afraid, as this creature seemed afraid, thisyouth, thisman, this
He had no way to name what he felt or what he saw; he had no reckoning even how much time had passed in the creatureʼs looking up, and shaking back his loose and tangled hair, and meeting him stare for stare.
But he knew that the men who held him were no restraint at all, if this bedraggled, fragile, glorious creature should decide to contest them.
Did no one but him see it? Did not Emuin, who was reputed wise in such matters, know that this threatening youth was not in any sense held by the guards? They had beaten him. There was straw in his dark hair and dirt on his clothes. If his guards had no terror of him, they were fools.
But maybe they had after all felt afraid had they not, clearly, exhausted their chain of command?
And had those superior to them not called others, until the affair of the prisoner racketed to Emuin?
And had not Emuin insisted, through Idrys, that His Highness needed to be dragged from bed urgently to intervene in the matter? This was not an ordinary case. In any sense.
Come. Come here. Cefwyn beckoned the young man closer, and the two guards brought him to the lowermost step. The young man gazed at him again, that intimate and terrifying stare as if the young man which he could not possibly do knew secrets that would damn his soul. The impression was so strong that almost he would have disposed the guards from the hall for fear of the youth speaking too much, or bringing some business worth lives and he did not even know he owned such dreadful secrets. He found no reason for such a fear; and the youth, besides, seemed weak and uncertain on his feet, apt at moments even to fall to the marble floor without the guardsʼ steadying hold.
A moment while his thoughts raced, that silence continued in the room, until one could all but hear the snap of candle flames, until the melting of wax like the melting of flesh just now in chambers above made the air cloying sweet. It was Orienʼs perfume. It clung to him. His thoughts scurried like mice, this way and that, desperate, looking for an approach to the problem and found it under his fingertips.
Is this your book? Cefwyn asked, lifting it from his lap.
Yes, sir.
And are you indeed a thief?
No, sir. I am not.
Where were you and what were you doing, to be arrested by my guards?
I was at the gate. I asked to see the master.
The Guelen guards were unhappy with that. They shook him and cuffed him, saying, Mind your manners, man. Say, yes, Your Highnessʼ and no, Your Highnessʼ, and Your Highness, if you pleaseʼ.
Cefwyn winced, almost protested but Aman, of the guard, added: ʼEʼs a wee bit daft, Your Highness. We had a notion he might be some Elwynim wiʼ that writing, if ye know, Your Highness, him and his clothes and his speech and all, and his being a stranger.
Who brought him in? Cefwyn asked, and had a confused and apologetic muttering from an officer of the gate-guards, and an avowal from Idrys himself, to which he waved a negligent hand: he knew the chain of command, and by now so did the young man too well, he was sure.
And you think him Elwynim? Walking in by daylight, in those clothes?
Your Highness, he flew right by the town guards, like their eyes was blinded, Your Highness, and them good men. He said he had old Mauryl for his master. He says he come down the road out of Marna, right from the cursed tower.
His heart skipped a beat, but it was only confirmation. He knew now that there was omen and worse in the young man. He had seen it in the book. He had been certain of it with never a breath of a name. And to judge by Emuinʼs urging to come intervene in this matter Emuin also had opinions, and fears to disturb his sleep, he could rely on that, too.
From the old keep, Cefwyn said, with the gooseflesh prickling on his arms, and a sense of peril and moment now to every move he made not acute, not inescapable, but there. The young man was looking at him, and he avoided those eyes with a glance at his captain of the guard. And them knocking the man about. Hardly prudent. One might make him angry.
This is not a jesting matter, my lord Prince.
And Emuin, unbidden: Ask him his business, my lord Prince. He asked for you.
That was not news he wished to hear. He rested his chin on his hand, assumed a stony indifference and slid a glance at the youth, trying trying to see flaws and faults in that countenance, in that overwhelming force of the youthʼs expectations.
That was what it was: expectation. Unmitigated. Unquestioning.
Faith. Appalling, utter faith, directed at him, in the godsʼ mercy, who was not accustomed to such impositions.