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Suvilien’s lord. “There, sir. Sit
at your ease; Godri here will fetch you wine and whatever else you desire. And
how is your lady? And your lady mother? Your sons are well, I trust? Your
eldest son’s son—a fine tall lad he must be, and ready soon to come out from
among the women.”
    “In the autumn, sire,” Lord Peridan said, warming perceptibly.
    Either he had forgotten his grievances, or he was choosing
to play the game as Estarion led it. Estarion cared little which. This mountain
of lard was his best defense against the storm that threatened in his mother’s
eyes, and perhaps worse, in Iburan’s. He would keep it by him for as long as he
could, and he would charm it into complacency, or he was no son of the Sun.
    As he set himself to play the courtier, Sidani made herself
a part of the camp. She did it with sublime simplicity: chose a fire, sat by
it, began to tell one of her stories. He was aware of her, distant and yet
close, as if she were a part of him; another thing to wonder at, but later,
when there was time to spare for things that mattered. For now it was enough
that she stayed.
    o0o
    “He has the gift,” the stranger said. “No doubt of that.”
    Vanyi eyed her sidelong. The woman had come in with
Estarion, walking in his shadow as if she had a right to be there. He never had
got round to explaining her, nor had she seen fit to explain herself. She was
simply there. People acted as if she belonged with them.
    Idiots. Courtiers. If it walked with the emperor, it was
his, and no one thought to question it.
    Vanyi must have said it aloud. The stranger said, “What,
like the royal cats? I like that, rather.”
    “What do you know of anything royal?”
    “His thoughts exactly,” the woman said.
    The fish had all gone to the great glutton of a lord, except
one that came by Godri’s hands, with his emperor’s compliments couched in the
elaborate phrases of the desert. She accepted it graciously, Vanyi granted her
that, and she showed a mastery of phrase that left Godri blinking in awe.
    She did not, Vanyi noticed, include any of the many formulas
of unworthiness. Nor did she try to decline the gift.
    “And why should I?” she asked of Vanyi. “I caught it.” She
divided it neatly and laid half of it on Vanyi’s plate. “Here, eat. It’s as
good as anything you’d catch at home.”
    “Fish of the sea is surpassingly fine,” Vanyi said.
    “But fish of the river is sweeter.” The stranger disposed of
hers with a cat’s neatness and economy, and followed it with a noble quantity
of lesser meats. In the middle of them she tilted her chin in the gesture that,
where Vanyi was born, meant greeting, and said, “Sidani, they call me.”
    “Vanyi,” said Vanyi. A mage guarded her name; but courtesy
was older than magery, and deeper rooted.
    This was not a mage. Vanyi was almost certain of that. Not a
priestess, either. And yet she had an air of both.
    Maybe it was simply age, and arrogance that put Estarion’s
to shame. They were all like that in the north. They called southerners
servile, and sneered at the grovelings of the west. Imperial majesty meant
nothing to them except as they partook of it. They never forgot that the
Sunborn was king of Ianon first, and Ianon was the heart of the north.
    “I’m not Ianyn,” Sidani said, “though my father was. I’m
everything and nothing.”
    “You look Ianyn,” Vanyi said. And stopped. “How do you do
that?”
    The dark eyes were as blankly innocent as a child’s. “Do
what, priestess?”
    Read my mind, Vanyi said without words.
    Nothing. No flicker of response. The mind before her was a
clear pool, transparent to the bottom, and thoughts in it as
quicksilver-elusive as fish. One, caught, was pleasure in the honeycake she
ate. Another held nothing more or less terrible than Vanyi’s own face, too
white and sharp for beauty, but the stranger reckoned it splendid.
    Vanyi did not like enigmas. Her body tensed to rise, to get
away. Her mind