But that warmth gathered herself in the last hours of the rain-drenched night and stole away… and over to the baggage piled out of the rain, in a corner of the huge tent. Cefwyn paid slight attention, deciding that Ninévrisë had thought of something undone, or left, or needed, in the way one did in the middle of the night on a journey, with all one's belongings confined to chests and boxes, and had the servants remembered the new boots or packed the writing kit?
Gods knew. There were times one simply had to get up and dispose of the question, and this night of noise and fury in the heavens, with the tent blown hard by the gusts and no great likelihood the army was going to break camp in the morning—this was such a troubled night, on their slow way through the edge of Murandys and to the river camp.
But Ninévrisë, having rummaged up something, or failed to find something, was quiet for a long while after.
Too long, Cefwyn decided. He had made up his mind to sleep late, having waked several times to realize the deluge continued, and still cherished the notion of late sleep until he rolled over to see what she was doing and saw her standing distressedly in the lightning flashes, with something flat and pale pressed to her bosom.
Then he knew that what she had ferreted from the baggage, from her belongings, was a piece of paper, thatpaper, and at this hour.
He shoved an elbow under him, looking at her in concern until he had a glance back.
Then she came back to him, and threw herself on her knees by the bedside.
"The baby's born," she said. "Tonight, the baby's born."
It was certainly not the sort of news to cheer either of them. The letter had told them nothing more till now, until he had ceased to believe it was anything but an inert scrap of unwritten paper.
But now this news broke through the days of silence, at the lightning-shot edge of a dawn that saw the army stalled, the roads surely turned to ponds and rivers.
And now in the dark of the tent he could not judge her expression, whether she wept, or frowned, or had no expression at all.
"More news," she said, and her voice trembled, barely audible above the battering of rain on the canvas walls. "Orien's dead."
" Orien." He was taken aback, and wondered whether she had mistaken the twins and misspoken. Women died in childbirth, and should it not be Tarien who died at this birth?
"She burned to death," Ninévrisë said. "She burned in her cell."
"Good gods." His memory of a glorious, beautiful woman could not fit the image of such a death. He raked his hair back, pushed upright and hauled the blanket around him against the chill of the rain and the unhappy report. "I take it it's that letter," he said. "Is that all he says?"
"The baby's name is Elfwyn," she said. "Tarien called him Maur-ydd, after the old wizard, I think; but Tristen said he was Elfwyn, so Elfwyn he is, now."
A king's name, for a king's bastard. And not only a king's name, but the name of the last High King. Thatwould not go unremarked among his uneasy barons. It was provocative and a trouble to the child and to him. Gods, what was Tristen thinking?
"What more?" he asked, unsettled. Tristen could be feckless at the most damnable times. "What news of Tristen?"
"He…" Ninévrisë"'s breath caught in her throat. She seemed to have caught a chill despite her robe, small wonder, at such news, and he moved quickly to gather her up and into his arms, in the warmth of an occupied bed.
The shivering kept up for a moment, and now he knew the truth, for Ninévrisë had taken the matter of Tarien's baby so entirely worldly-wise and matter-of-factly he had convinced himself she accepted it without a ripple.
Now in a stroke he doubted all his assumptions, about this, about all the other slights she took so calmly. She forgave him in the very embrace of her arms and the inclinations of her heart, but the existence of a child named as, gods help them, Tristen of all people… had named this child… what could she think?
What could anyone think?
And what did Tristen think, giving hisson that name? Not a damned thing, was the first conclusion that leapt up in him: Tristen could be the most feckless soul alive, did things because those were the thoughts he said Unfolded to him, thoughts that leapt into a head that otherwise could be utterly absorbed with a hawk's flight or the shape of a leaf.
Yet Tristen, the worst liar in all Ylesuin, was not dealing with a hawk or a leaf in this child… this was not something Tristen would treat casually or on a whim, and the other aspect of his flighty concentration was that absolute, terrifying honesty, in which he would leap in where no courtier would tread. He had met that appalling honesty when—gods! when he had left off his folly of love-making with the Aswydd women and gone downstairs to look a stranger in the eyes… and he had never after been able to avoid that stare, that truth, that honesty. Like a boulder in a brook, it had diverted all his life into a different path.
And now… now the result of that moment was a child, and Tristennamed him. He was deaf to wizardry, but like a deaf man, he could feel the drumbeat in the ground under him: a moment had come back to haunt him and change his life.
ElfwynTristen named the boy. So, indeed, Elfwyn he was, the will and word of his unacknowledged father and his father's wife notwithstanding.
And this Elfwyn, this bastard prince, was in fact heir to nothing, since his only legitimate claim, Amefel—where a maternal lineage did have legal force—had passed to Tristen's hands. But in his Aswydd and Marhanen blood he had substantial claims to everything in reach, if he one day decided to reach for it and cause a world of trouble.
With that name, the name of the last Sihhë High King, he had claims to gods knew what more.
Is this, he asked himself, the King To Come? This child? Mine? It was not what he had thought. Tristenwas what he had thought, and trusted Tristen's complete lack of ambition. But this? Did Tristen name his own heir, in this child?
"It's not all," Ninévrisë said faintly, holding to him, "it's not all. Ryssand's with Tasmôrden."
He laughed, untimely, unseemly given the circumstances. "That's no news."
"He means to kill you."
A second time he laughed, this time because he was already set to laugh and wanted to deny all fears tonight and reassure her… but on his next breath he fully heard what she had said, and knew it was part of that letter, and felt cold through and through—not believing, far from disbelieving a warning from Tristen—and in the context of this newborn child, potential heir, potential pretender to more than two thrones.
" Here?" he asked.
"Tristen overheard some sort of plot, I don't know how, but I think the way wizards know. Tasmôrden's courting Ryssand—he's persuading Ryssand, with all sorts of promises if you should die, if weshould die… that they'll make peace, for lands, all the bargain to be good no matter who makes it. Efanorwould have no way to rally an army."
"Does Tristen say that?"
She hesitated. "I think it's been there a while. It doesn't feel part of the rest, but I only heard it tonight. I think it was the disturbance there. And I wasn't sure of it before, but now I know it's there… I don't think I thought it was different, thinking you by no means trust Ryssand, or Cuthan, either. But it's different now, and I know, and I don't know how I know, except it's from the letter. But Tristen doesn't know where we are, he doesn't know we've marched—"