"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 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 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. Mysecret. 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 aregood, 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 Marhanenblood."
"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 isright; 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 kingwould 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 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'vedone 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. " Weare the aethelings. We are the royals and we wereroyal before the Sihhë came down from the Hafsandyr! This land belongsto 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. Maurylwished 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 isthe 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 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 thatto exile."