He eased the door shut. The latch went down, and stung, doing so.
Emuin's head came up. Eyes blinked, as if trying to resolve what they saw.
"Well, well," Emuin said. "Is there trouble? Or more trouble?"
"Forgive me. I need words, master Emuin."
Two blinks more. "Words for Cefwyn?"
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, try follyand prodigious fool."
"You don't mean that, sir."
At this point Paisi waked, looking exhausted and startled at once.
"Oh, I mean it," Emuin said, ignoring the boy. "I said it then, damn his stubborn ways, and I say it again."
"But I can't. Do I say to him… Tarien Aswydd has your child, a son? That's what I've written."
"That's fair enough. That should inform a thoughtful young man he's been a fool. That's the essence of the report, isn't it? Maybe he'll hear it from you."
"He listens to you."
"Not in this."
"Ninévrisë will be upset with him, won't she?"
"Oh, I imagine she'll be somewhat upset. She's a lady capable of setting aside her heart's feeling to serve her common sense, but this will test the limit, I rather think."
There had been a time he had not understood Emuin's humors, or his ironies. Now they cut keenly, but he knew that they shielded a worried and fond heart.
"What will she do when she knows?"
"All of that is Cefwyn's to deal with," Emuin said brusquely, not yours. You're not the keeper of his conscience, nor am I. Just deliver him what he needs to know, and let him find the way through this maze. It's enough we have the lady in keeping and she's not making pilgrimage to Guelemara this winter. At very leastwe'll deal with the birth. I don't know what more we can do with the plain, unpleasant truth."
"Am I not to be his friend? Wasn't that your advice? And Wouldn't a friend give him something more than just… the plain truth, on a paper? Shouldn't I have something else to say? Shouldn't I be wise enough to have advice?"
Emuin's frown eased, and the fierce scowl revised itself into a more pensive, wounded look.
"Or can't youadvise him, sir?" Tristen leaned both hands on the table, on the welter of charts and dishes. "You came here with me, and you left him to fend for himself. Idrys is clever, and Her Grace is wise, and Annas is kind, but youaren't there, and I think he'd truly wish you were with him when he reads this letter. He needs your advice. He needs it most of all."
"I can't travel in this weather. I'm old. My bones won't stand the saddle, I can't ride through such drifts, and by the time a carriage; made the trip the news would have walked to Guelemara, drifts and all. I can't advise him! Too many people know this. Someoneis going to tell the wrong person, if they haven't already run to the capital to shout it in the streets, and the longer we wait, the more certain that is. We don't know we're not already too late to keep it out of Ryssand's hands… particularly if those blackguards of Es-; san's attacked the nuns because someone had found out about Ta-rien. Tarien might have been their reason, more fool they—someone's hope to keep her andthe babe when it's born. And if that was the case and if they lost her, they'd have run straight to the capital and reported to whoever set them on."
"Or they'd run for the far hills and not come at all."
"There is that hope."
"Orien thought it might be because Cefwyn found out. I don't think so. If he knew, he didn't need to send the Guelen Guard: Idrys, maybe, but not soldiers to attack the nuns. I think they could be; Ryssand's. Maybe Orien said what she did about Cefwyn finding out because she suspected someonehad found out, but I don't think that someone is Cefwyn. He wouldn't kill the nuns."
"He would not," Emuin mused, raking tangles from his beard. "I can think of two reasons there was an attack on Anwyfar in the first place: first, the one you name, that someone knew there was a child and wanted Tarien in his hands. Ryssand could do gods know what at that point, none good. So could Tasmôrden, if Cuthan spilled what he knows in that quarter, and if he knows too much. That's well possible.—Or it could be someone's blind ill working that bounced off us like a rock off a shield and rebounded on the closest and most vulnerable of our precautions. Our confinement of the Aswydds was always chancy."
"There's a third," he said, taking very seriously what Emuin said.
"That the working was Orien's, to arrange an escape, and to come here. She surely wished it. Ordinarily she couldn't manage it. But she found a current already moving—and maybe she found help."
"Certainly she'd like to be involved," Emuin said. "And think, too: the gainer in what's happened is Orien. She's here. The great loser thus far in what happened is Ryssand: he'd have been so pleased to have Tarien in his hands. The scandal will still break: there's no hiding it forever. But if we'revery lucky we might conceal the child until after the attack across the bridges. If Cefwyn wins the war and sets Ninévrisë on the throne, he can do no wrong in her people's eyes and if Ninévrisë has her kingdom back, she may forgive him his old sins. Maybe wewished too hard for Cefwyn's safety and something we've done is looking out for his interests… preventing the rumor reaching home, in fact."
"And those women died for that?'"''He was appalled by the thought.
"Oh, don't count it our fault: it may be no one's particular fault—except the scoundrels who killed the nuns, of course. They have the fault. The rest is blind chance. Water breaks out where the dike is lowest, young lord, never the strongest point. And by now, after what Mauryl's done, what I've done, what other agencies have done—there's a lot of water flowing."
"Are they guilty, without knowing what they did?"
"Oh, they knew what they did. And it may even have been Orien they were after. These were Quinalt men. They served in Amefel when she ruled here. They knew her for a sorceress and they hate sorcery. As for the nuns, they were nuns of mysect, not the Quinalt, and these men were Ryssand's. Maybe they were looking for nothing more than some charge of latent witch-work to lay against the Teran-thines. Ryssand's failed in one assault on Cefwyn's rule; he may be looking for another weak point, and never forget that Cefwyn is Teranthine, and that I am. A sorceress sent among Teranthine nuns to hide her and keep her head on her shoulders—how will that sound among the orthodox and doctrinist Quinaltines?—Ah, me, write you must, but we have to keep this news out of Guelessar in general, if that's possible, yet be sure Cefwyn knows. We've sheltered these Women, we have them, all to our advantage now, and whatever wizardry opposes us will go straight for that babe. Rely on it."
Much of it seemed conjecture, none leading anywhere.
But the part about wizardry and the baby sounded all too reasonable.
"So we," Emuin concluded, "must do something about it."
"What can we do, sir?"
Emuin rose from his chair at the table and picked up a rod that was at the moment weighing down a half a score of scattered parchments. He waved it at Tristen, waved again in what seemed an instruction to stand on the other side of the table.
Tristen did so. Emuin pushed the rod end-on toward him across that scatter of charts.
"Now push it back to me."
Tristen obliged. Emuin received the end, and mildly pushed the other end again toward Tristen's side of the table, while Paisi came and stared dubiously at the proceedings.
"Push it back to me," Emuin said, and as Tristen slid it toward him, Emuin placed a thin, arthritic finger in the path of the rod, with a tap diverting it to the side.