breakfast there at all and that Otter was still asleep in his bed, with no one to wake him. If that was the case, he swore he would have her beaten.
“Where is he?” his father walked near to ask him.
“I don’t know, sire,” Aewyn said faintly. “He should have been here. I sent my maid with breakfast, to wake him. Shall I go up and fi nd out?”
“We have to leave now. We have no choice,” his father said, vexed, then turned and dispatched one of his own bodyguard upstairs on the spot, with orders to rouse Otter.
No choice. No choice, now, and no Otter with the family, Aewyn thought, as his father waved a hand and set the whole processional moving toward the doors. And it was the worst outcome: his father’s men were apt to ask close questions, particularly if they did find Otter abed, and Otter was a godless Amefi n, in the reckoning of all too many Guelenfolk. This morning was to be Otter’s chance, his moment to make his best appearance before all the people, nobles and commons, to be written in the book and quietly mend so many things that had been wrong as long as they had been alive.
It was Otter’s chance, and if he didn’t come down the stairs in the next few moments, it was worse than a missed chance: it was a disrespect to the Quinaltine and to the family and most of all to their father . . . only the family knew it, of course, at this point, but that meant the family servants and guards knew it, and that meant kitchen staff was going to find it out by noon, and half of Guelemara was going to know it by nightfall.
The great doors opened on the dark. Lantern - bearers went downstairs and out first. The snow fell in a fine sleet outside, hazing the lanterns and the torches, as a wave of cold gusted in at them. A priest and two acolytes met them at the doors— doubtless they had been freezing quietly for the last half hour. The priest walked ahead, chanting about sins and atonement and ringing a bell, the acolytes swinging censers, which glowed with inner fi re.
The family walked first after that. It was too late, too late, now, for Otter to make his appearance; and with a backward and despairing glance at a vacant stairway, Aewyn fell in with his mother.
Incense could not linger in the wind. It left the censers as fast as it rose, leaving nothing but the faintest impression. That walk down the Processional Way and into the Quinaltine square was even more exposed to the wind, and the steps of the Quinaltine itself had gotten slick and treacherous despite the boys generously sanding the treads. Aewyn stayed close to his mother, who had refused to relinquish Aemaryen to the nurse this morning and was in no cheerful mood.
Inside, the incense was thick in the comparative warmth, the dim sanctu-9 3
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ary packed with worshippers who rose to their feet, a thunderous echo as the family walked in. Anyone who might have thought to see Otter with the royal family this morning looked in vain . . . an absence that would signal something in itself. Aewyn walked by his uncle’s side, his mother and father walking together down the aisle, with his little sister in his mother’s arms.
Trumpets sounded, startling the handful of pigeons who always seemed to have found a way to settle on the lofty cornices inside, and the choir broke out in a hymn of repentance and sorrow, while the birds fl ew about in con-sternation. In his heart, Aewyn wished he could fly up and sit elsewhere— up in the dark rafters would be nice, where no one had to look at him, but the family was destined for the very front row, up by the railing that seperated the priests from everybody else.
They reached their seats. When the king sat, then the nobles and the commons could sit down. The skittish pigeons flew into the sacred place and out again, and the priests arrayed themselves behind the altar that divided the railing.
His father’s bodyguard was always right behind them. So was the Prince’s guards, who still attended Efanor, and Guelen guards stood at intervals by the pillars as the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Marshal of the North reached their seats. The majority of all the seats went to the nobles, the rest to the richest burghers of Guelemara— the poor were obliged to stand out in the dark as the sun came up and the snow came down, for the whole length of the services, while the priests talked about sin and repentance.
Do the poor people get a service, too? he’d asked his father, a year or so ago, and his father had said, No. The sermon is on sin. Rich sinners contrib-ute more. And probably, with the nobles and the burghers, His Holiness has the right audience.
Hush, my lord, his mother had said, looking about at the servants.
And his father: Rich men give power. That’s the offering the priests most covet. The boy should learn that. He’s of an age to know how the world goes.
The priests shouldn’t hear you say it, his mother had said, and his father had said:
See? Power. Power is what they want most. And, mark me, son of mine: they shouldn’t get too rich a diet of it.
He was supposed to be meditating on his sins, not on the priests’ bad behavior; but there it was: he meditated on that exchange with his father instead, every word of it brought fresh in his memory by present circumstance.
He meditated on Otter, and their plot to feed the horses, against the priests’
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will; and on Otter’s absence this morning, which worried him no end, and was probably because Otter, who was shocked that people lied, had decided he didn’t want to be lied to when he was as upset as he was about his gran.
His father’s guard had failed to turn him up; he had heard no late arrival coming in.
He hoped Otter had just gotten upset and hidden away when the search started— Otter would do that: he had no great trust of soldiers. He knew all the hiding places Otter could use, all the secret places he had shown Otter in the Guelesfort, and if Otter was hiding, he would be deeply hidden, where his father’s guards, not having spent a childhood in the Guelesfort, would not likely look— or fi t into.
The Holy Father got up and talked about sin, sin of thoughts and sin of deeds, sins of omission and sins of commission, in clerkly detail. His Holiness said they had to examine all they did and failed to do, all they thought of doing and all they refrained from doing. It seemed to Aewyn that if they did all that, they’d never budge from where they sat, and he was otherwise inclined. His thoughts were already winging through the Guelesfort, impatient to act the moment they escaped the sanctuary.
Aemaryen began to fret, a thin, plaintive cry. Other babies took to crying, which roused still others, so that it was a wonder the priest could remember what came next. But crying babies led him to talk about lamentations for sins: lamentations, as if babes in arms had committed any sins.
End to end of the dome it racketed, unfed babies, unhappy mothers and fathers, fretful two - year- olds, who had to be admonished not to fi dget, and toddlers, who only knew they were hungry, too, and kept swinging their feet or squirming.
Aewyn sat and clenched and unclenched his hands, clenched his toes in his boots, bit his lip and counted the rosettes on the railing behind the altar.
When he was done with that, he counted the orbs that decorated the screen behind the altar; and then he counted the intersections of bars that screened the choir.
The choir stood up and sang, a high, piercing wail, lamenting the sins of the world. By now every baby in the sanctuary was crying— crying for the sins of the world, the priests said, like the dumb, unfed beasts. His mother spent her service trying to comfort the baby, while his father sat stone - faced and unmoving at this comparison.
And somewhere in the halls of the Guelesfort, themselves missing services, his father’s guard kept searching, he supposed, to no avail yet, since they hadn’t dragged Otter into services like some escaped felon.
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But, oh, gods, he thought then: if they had started looking for Otter, they were likely looking for Paisi, too— and that trail went clear to the town gate and on.
It certainly wasn’t the way they’d hoped for their father to
find out about Paisi’s escape. Otter might think of that, too, and just run for it, being a skittish sort.
Lamentations for sins, and a spate of long, long singing. Aewyn made himself sit still, working his toes to keep his feet from going numb on the chill floor. He lost track of what the Holy Father said, wondering how far Otter could get in three hours, if he had suddenly decided to follow Paisi, and run.
If he had . . . their spring was ruined. Everything was ruined.
If he had . . . maybe he was as far as Esbrook, by now, but not if the snow was still coming down outside. It had been snowing before dawn. But in the shadowy bowels of the Quinaltine there was no way to for him to know now whether the snow had stopped or whether it had come on a blinding blizzard.
Third long lamentation, and a prayer for which they all must stand, even the king and queen. Aewyn stood up in his new boots, working his feet to bring the blood back to his toes. The sanctuary by now smelled of musky incense combined with wet fur, furs that had come in snowy and then, soaked from snowmelt, now overheated. Everyone stank, stank of fur, stank of perfume.
He wanted desperately to be back in the Guelesfort. If he was there, he could find Otter. He knew where to look, and he could talk to Otter and get sense out of him— if he hadn’t gone for the gate.
At last, at last, the singing drew down to the final hymn, the one that cursed the Bryalts. Aemaryen had long since exhausted her outrage and dropped off to sleep, one small arm trailing from his mother’s arms, and he saw his mother’s weary and angry expression, her impatient side - to - side rocking of his little sister. Nurse, who was in the row behind, leaned forward and mutely offered again to take the baby, but his mother doggedly shook her head and kept rocking Aemaryen, her lips grimly set.
He had never taken the service seriously in his life. Now the words embarrassed him, angered him. He accidentally met his mother’s eyes. Not that much longer, that expression said. His mother meant to endure the insult for his father’s sake; and his father knew, and his father’s jaw had a muscle jumping. He realized for the first time how very greatly this annual show upset everyone, how his father himself didn’t have the power to prevent the Holy Father doing this; and he told himself that when he was king, he would 9 6
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find a way. He might have to be Quinalt all his life, but he would find a way to get the better of the priests. His sister would have to grow up Bryalt, and leave them, and go to Elwynor to live, none of it her choice, either: that was the way of kings and queens. But they had much happier festivals in Elwynor, the same as in Amefel, and he and Otter would go there and visit his sister when they liked. He would do all of that when he was king.
But when he was king, he would have no father to guide him, and he couldn’t at all look forward to that day. So he would be patient, oh, so patient, standing here every year for years and years and years if he had to. He would grow angrier, and angrier, like his father, whose feelings toward the priests and whose occasional blasphemies he began to understand entirely.
He would store it all up, for his mother’s sake, for his sister, and for Otter, too. He would make himself strong, and clever, like his uncle Efanor, but, unlike Efanor, he would not work with the priests, to manage them, but against them, one and all, head - on and headlong, as his father would say.
Finally, finally, the Holy Father held up his arms, invoked the gods for mercy, and dismissed the congregation.
Thank the gods, he said to himself, not half - reckoning what he was thinking. The royal family at least had the precedence in leaving the sanctuary, and he followed his father and his mother down the aisle, Aemaryen suddenly yelling with might and main.
The great doors opened on a white, snowy morning, and they walked out into the clean, cold air, down the sanded steps, and past the lines of Guelen and Dragon Guard who made a barrier against the general townsfolk. They walked, Aemaryen hiccuping and furious, and kicking, now, so the nurse fi -
nally intervened, for decorum’s sake. Trumpets blew, and the great iron gates of the Guelesfort swung outward to receive them home again.
All Aewyn was thinking of by now was to slip away from the family and go to Otter’s room, by the first, not the grand, stairway. The moment they passed into the warm, close dark of the Guelesfort he dived aside and ran up the stairs the servants used, with his own guard in confused pursuit.
The upper hall had all the candles lit despite the light from the windows.
He hurried to the room Otter had, where guards stood.
“Have you found him?” he asked his father’s guards.
“No, Your Highness,” the answer was. “We’re still searching.”
“Your Highness,” his own guards tried to remonstrate with him, but he ignored their protests and hurried on, then, across the landing for the grand stairs, wickedly racing ahead of his father’s procession upward. He dived into his room and met his own servants’ startled faces.
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“Where is he?” he demanded. “Where is Otter?”
“Your Highness.” Captys, senior of his servants, was there. Two others were. And Captys was clearly distraught.
“Where is Otter?”
“Your Highness, the maid, Madelys, saw him at witchcraft, and when— ”
His heart turned over on that word. “Who said? Who said so? Madelys?”
The girl hovered in the doorway beyond, knotting and unknotting her apron.
“Fool! Where is he?”
“He seems to have vanished, Your Highness,” Captys said.
“Useless!” It was what his father would say, when he was at his wits’ end with the servants. “Stay here, the lot of you! You, too,” he added, stabbing a gesture at his guards. “Stay here and tell my father that I shall fi nd him.”
“Witchery!” Madelys cried. “Your Highness, you might put yourself in danger!”
“I want her gone before I get back! Banished from these rooms, forever!”
“Your Highness!” Madelys wailed.
“Fool, I say!”
“No, Your Highness, I saw it! He had the water and the feather and a charm, and he was at it, plain as plain!”
“And you know so much about witchcraft I should be suspicious? Go down to the kitchens, and do not you say any word of gossip, girl, not one, on your life! Count it lucky I don’t send you to the Guard kitchens!
Damn it!”
He spun on his heel and stalked to the door, and out it, with one furious look at his senior guardsman, Selmyn, who attempted to follow. “My orders!” he said. “Carry them out!”
With that, he slammed the door and ran, ran, ignoring his father’s party, which was just going in the doors: little Aemaryen, starving, sleepy, and furious, made noise enough to cover any commotion. He ran right past them for the servants’ stairs, up and up, past even the level where the storerooms were, and where his father’s men always searched if he was missing.
Upstairs, however, farther upstairs— one apparently useless little set of steps in the high end of the endmost workroom, if one got up on the counter, and above, there was a little trapdoor, an access to the eaves. He had shown it to Otter, the two of them up in the very highest part of the Guelesfort, looking out the littlest windows of all and watching people come and go in the yard, while they ate stolen sweets.
He had no candle, this time. He stopped still, standing right over at the 9 8
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opening of the trap, knowing by memory what was next, which was a lot of beams, but if he went farther, he would be utterly blind in the dark, with only the dim light from below to mark where the trapdoor was. If it were to be shut, it might take searching on hands and knees to find it again.
And Otter, if he was here, had shut it.
“Otter!” he called out, fearful to go too much farther without a light.
“Otter, it’s Aewyn! Where are you?”
ii
“aewyn will fi
nd him,’’ cefwyn muttered, having seen his son running in the hall and knowing very well what he was about, given the report from the guards. “If he’s not away out the gates. Damn that girl!”
Ninévrisë set a hand on his shoulder. She had stayed by him. Efanor was elsewhere in the hall, tracking precisely where and to whom the maid had already prattled her tale of witchcraft and trying to forestall a priestly inquiry.
“The court will not have truly expected his appearance,” Ninévrisë said.
“They had rumors of it. And not a sign of him, nor Paisi, either. If they’re anywhere, they’re in the loft. Why doesn’t the Guard ever search the damned loft? We hid up there, in our day, there and the stables, but no one ever searches the loft.”
It was close quarters up there for a man without armor, let alone a guard in full kit, that was one reason. The juniormost servants had to perform that search, if needed— now and again an investigation went into that precinct.
But it was a maze of timbers and nooks, and one boy determined to burrow deep into the eaves would not be found until he grew desperate from thirst.
And damn Otter for a fool— damn the circumstances that had sent a hare - witted girl to his rooms to spy on him. And where in the gods’ own name was Paisi?
Things had gone wrong, and gone wrong at several points, and it was not only the serving girl who fretted about magic. The king of Ylesuin had attempted to slip his sorcery - gotten son into respectable notice at court, attempted to gather up all the misdeeds and tag ends of his misspent youth and to do justice by those who hadn’t had it. Most of all he had tried to ignore the old connections, thinking he could just ease the whole untidy situation past the jagged edges of old magic, Sihhë magic, and Tarien Aswydd’s outright curse.