Read Online Fortress of Dragons by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online

domain. He took tribute now and again in the form of hot bread and the occasional sweet.
    This time, however, he was straight from a good breakfast, had delayed only to toss the remnant of bread to the pigeons, and had come down here on matters he hoped Cook had observed last night.
    â€œSeven, eight months along,” Cook said to him, confirming Uwen’s guess, and added with a shake of her head, as she folded her stout, floury arms: “And wandering in the storm, they say, clear from Anwyfar.”
    â€œLady Orien said they began with a horse and lost it.—But might they have walked that far, do you think? Orien might. But Tarien—”
    Cook set her hands on her hips and wiped a strand of blowing hair. They stood in the draft, and Cook was sweating, even so. “To tell the truth, m’lord, I hain’t the least notion where Anwyfar is, except it’s in Guelessar, which is far enough for a body in high summer and with the roads fair and dry. With the storm, and the drifts and all…”
    â€œWas it impossible for them, since, say, Midwinter Eve?”
    â€œI don’t know as to impossible, m’lord, but…” Cook had an unaccustomedly fearful look, and added with a shift of her eyes toward the upstairs, and back again: “Their ladyships has a gift, don’t they?”
    â€œThey do,” he said. “Both.—So it had to be before that.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Cook said. “I’ve never traveled by horse. I hain’t the least idea. Was it Midwinter, m’lord?”
    â€œOr before. It might have been before. They might have tried to be here on Midwinter, and come late.”
    â€œFor wizardous reasons, m’lord?” Cook’s eyes narrowed. Little frightened her, but she ventured her question in a hushed and respectful tone.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said.
    Cook said not a thing to that. She was a discreet soul, in her way, and not a word would she say to the maids that she knew she was saying, but the gossip was bound to fly, and had already flown. He saw the looks from the staff all about them. At a certain point the rattle of a spoon sounded like doom, and swiftly hushed.
    â€œGet back to your work!” Cook said sharply, and: “M’lord, there’s sweets, there.”
    He took one. It was honey and fine flour, and stuck to his fingers. The lord of Amefel licked fingertips on the way out, and then turned back and took two more, which he saved as he climbed the rebuilt scullery stairs.
    He ascended to the west stairs, and up to an area of the Zeide which had had a very different feeling for him this summer past, when Cefwyn had been in residence.
    Not Cefwyn’s bodyguard, now, but Guelen guards from the town garrison stood at that door, and more in Guelen colors stood down the hall. Guards guarding the guards: that was the seriousness of Uwen’s precaution where it regarded Orien Aswydd and her sister.
    The guards on watch opened the foyer door for him, not advising those within; and at a wave of his hand, he set his own watch on that threshold, a ward, a pass of his hand, and a wish, whether the guards knew it or not…but Orien knew it. He felt her attention, and her anger: she had set her own ward on the door, and he violated it with hardly more than a chill.
    Her precaution was reasonable and he was hardly angry, but he was sorry not to have set his own last night, for the guards’s safety.
    His two nunnish guests, clad all in gray, sat at the snowy window, and as he entered, Orien rose straight as a candleflame to defy him, gray habit, red hair unveiled in its cropped despoilment. She had been a lord’s sister, accustomed to luxury, sought after for her beauty, her birth, her access to power, even before she had been duchess of Amefel.
    Now instead of the glittering court gowns, the velvets and jewels and the circlet on her wealth of autumn hair, she wore a travel-stained