“Pol never said that.”
“He implied it!”
Rohan put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing the tense muscles. “My love, you’ve been jumpy ever since we learned who this Ruval really is. I think you’re being a little too sensitive.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she warned. “Ruval is something else you won’t talk to me about, and don’t think I don’t know why.” She glared at him in the mirror. “Jumpy, am I? Sensitive? Pol’s behaving as if he’s about to Choose an enemy’s bastard daughter, Ianthe’s sons have suddenly appeared out of nowhere to challenge his right to Princemarch—with sorcery involved—and I can’t even express what I feel in decent privacy to my own husband?”
“Sioned!” He had rarely seen her so upset. “There are threats here, I’ll admit, but Pol’s not a child. And he’s not fool enough to take Meiglan as his wife!”
“Do you believe that?” she demanded. “Do you? If you answer yes, you’re a liar.”
“You and I made a promise to tell each other the truth. Or at least never to lie, which doesn’t quite amount to the same thing, as you’ve demonstrated on several occasions. So—yes, the prospect of a Cunaxan as the mother of my grandchildren revolts me. But until Ruval comes out from whatever rock he’s hiding under and Pol comes to his own conclusions about Meiglan, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do, is there?”
Sioned relented. Placing her hands on his where they rested on her shoulders, she said, “I’ve been frightened before, Goddess knows. Pol’s been in danger before, his rights in doubt. But—”
“But you and I were always acting on his behalf. Protecting him, making the decisions for him. This time he’s on his own. We have to trust him, Sioned—and trust in the training we gave him.”
“Yes,” she replied slowly. “He’s not a child. But there’s an innocence about him, Rohan. I can’t quite explain it. A quality of being . . . untouched somehow, even though he’s a grown man and a ruling prince—and no stranger to women.”
“Unlike his extremely backward father,” Rohan murmured, smiling a little.
“Oh? I heard about when you were eighteen and had been in your first battle and were quite full of yourself.”
“Myrdal told on me, I suppose. Did she also mention I was so full of victory wine that I remember almost nothing of that whole night?”
“Almost?” She arched a brow.
“Well. . . . Enough to know what I wanted when I finally met you.”
“Exactly. And Pol knows enough to know what he wants from this girl.”
“She has a name, you know.”
“Don’t divert me from the issue,” Sioned told him severely.
“Very well.” He pulled a chair into the sun and sat down; since they were obviously in for a long discussion, he decided he might as well be comfortable. “Let’s talk about trusting Pol’s wits and judgment. Do you or don’t you?”
“In everything else, yes! He’s proved himself as a prince and as a man—”
“Has he? I wonder.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
Rohan propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, lacing his fingers together. The great Desert topaz surrounded by emeralds shone on his hand. “I worried sometimes that my son would come to resent me the way I resented my own father. Oh, I loved Zehava and admired him deeply, for all that we were nothing alike. But by the time I was twenty or so I was frantic to rule a princedom I thought I understood better than he did.” He smiled wryly. “A fine piece of adolescent conceit, you’ll agree.”
“Pol doesn’t feel that way at all, Rohan.”
“No. We’re lucky that way. He has his own princedom to govern, so he doesn’t have to covet mine in order to prove his talents. He’s not even sure he wants to be High Prince—he’s perfectly willing to let me wrestle with that for the next fifty years or so. So there’s no jealousy or rivalry between us.”
“Of course not. But I don’t understand—”
“Let me finish. When I put Princemarch in his name instead of mine it wasn’t only because he has blood-right to it, while my claim was only spoils of war. I wanted him to grow up thinking of Princemarch as his, to know that he would rule it long before he gets the Desert as well. By now he has every confidence in himself as a prince and a man.
“But, you see, he never really had to work for it. He’s never been given things outright—he had to earn his way from squire to knighthood, and, Goddess know, Urival and Morwenna were strict enough with faradhi training. You and Ostvel and I put him through an equally tough school when it came to governing. But he’s never fought for and won anything, either. The way I had to fight Roelstra that summer to win my own respect as a prince—and to win you.”
Sioned tapped her nails on the dressing table. “And Pol hasn’t done that yet. Rohan—do you think he needs to?”
“I think everyone needs to take the risk in some form or another. How else to discover one’s possibilities?”
She was silent for a time, mulling over his words. More than anything else about her, he loved this: that she listened to him with all her gifts. She never meekly agreed with him simply because he was her husband and the High Prince. If she thought he was wrong she said so; if she accepted his reasoning she explained why, almost always confirming his own thoughts with things he hadn’t considered. Precious as she was to him as his wife, she was essential as his princess.
At last she spoke. “It’s natural for the young to be impatient to test themselves. To take the risk, as you said.”
“They have to announce their arrival as adults,” he said, smiling.
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant. They can afford to risk everything because they don’t really know what life is about. They don’t know that the things worth daring all for aren’t grand or glorious, really.” She tucked one bare foot beneath her, frowning slightly. “You played Roelstra for a fool because you loved the game—and only afterward found out why you’d played it.”
“For the right to wake up in my own bed each morning with you at my side. The right to live in peace, without my sword constantly to hand.” And to teach his son—not the formal things, not law or history or rule, but mending a bridle, or how to whistle. Not great issues, but the little everyday things no one thought anything about until circumstances destroyed them. “The risks we take make us appreciate a peaceful life without risks. Pol doesn’t understand that yet. He hasn’t tested himself. What he’ll face soon is the risk of everything—but he doesn’t even know what ‘everything’ is.”
“And we can’t do it for him this time. Rohan, do people go on taking risks if they don’t win what they set out to win—or prove themselves to their own satisfaction?”
“Perhaps the risk must be great enough to teach us our limits as well as our possibilities.” And perhaps, he thought, one had to know war—of whatever kind—before one could embrace the slow and patient sameness of days that make up peace.
“Do you know what really frightens me?” Sioned asked abruptly. “What if what you do win isn’t enough?”
“That’s something Pol has to decide.”
Haunted green eyes met his. “Rohan—”
“His decision, Sioned. His risk. Not ours.”
Rebellion flickered, was extinguished with a weary acceptance he had never seen in her before. “You’re wiser than I, my love,” she murmured. “But then, you have less to lose. You won’t give these sorcerers their real identities, so I will. They’re not just Ianthe’s sons. They’re Pol’s half-brothers. I’ve dreaded this since the night I took him from Feruche. It’s time, Rohan, I can feel it. I risked my life and Tobin’s and Ostvel’s to claim him—and I’m about to risk losing him because of what I did.”
“Sioned, I’ve said this time and again and you never seem to hear it. Ianthe had the bearing of him, but he’s your son, not hers.”