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them.
    Now they had defeated that ally of hers, at Lewenbrook. And if Cefwyn had now proposed it, he did not know whether he would have been so quick to save her life, or Cefwyn to hear him: to that extent they both had changed.
    —Is it so? Orien asked him, a voice as sharp and cold as a dagger. Is it so? Did you save us? And had the bloody Marhanen not a shred of remorse ?
    "Can you keep us in this prison?" Tarien asked, assailing him from the other side. "We have nothing , not even a change of clothes. My sister is the aetheling . Whatever else, she is the aetheling, and no one should forget it, least of all under this roof!" Tarien's eyes glistened as she confronted him. A handkerchief suffered murder in her clenched hands.
    "Aethelings, yes," Tristen corrected her gently. "Both of you. But Crissand of Meiden is the aetheling now, and there's no changing that."
    Orien's eyes flared. "By whose appointment? Cefwyn's ? He has no right!"
    "By mine, lady." He could be obstinate. He had learned it of Emuin.
    And he had every right, beyond Cefwyn's grant of power to him. He was suddenly as sure of that as if it had Unfolded to him: their power had ebbed here, and ebbed further as he gave it away to others.
    More, Orien knew it, and fear insinuated itself into all her dealings.
    "For my sister's sake," Orien said, past tight lips, "we require a lady or two—a lady , mind you. Shall a lady of our rank give birth with the cook and the scullery maids in attendance?"
    That was unkind. Cook had never affronted Orien that he knew of.
    But he had no wish to provoke a quarrel that might bring harm to someone. "If you object to Cook, I might ask Lord Drumman's sister fortress of dragons.html
    to assist you."
    "Lady Criselle? That preening crow!"
    Now it was Crissand's mother Orien slandered. "Lady Orien," Tristen said with measured patience. "No one pleases you. You may not have your servants. You refuse all others. I don't know what more there is."
    "I wish my own nurse," Tarien cried, and burst into tears. "They murdered her, at Anwyfar. They killed all the nuns, and Dosyll with them. She was sixty years old, and she never threatened them!"
    "I'm sorry." He was honestly afflicted by her report. "Who did it, and why?"
    "Brave soldiers of the Guelen Guard," Orien interposed harshly.
    Heroes of the same company the bloody Marhanen garrisoned in my town, the same company as these hulking men you post at my door!
    The Marhanen's best bandits! Murderers! Mercenaries!"
    "Are you sure they were of the Guard?"
    "And should I not be sure, with the Guelens garrisoned at Amefel all my life? I know what I saw. I know their badges and their ranks and of one of them I knew the face!"
    "Do you know the name?" he asked, with a sinking heart recalling the men he had dismissed home because of their discontent in his service, men guilty of malfeasance and murders that should have sent them to the hangman, if they had not acted under Crown authority, in the person of Lord Parsynan.
    "Essan," she said, and he had to bow to the truth.
    "I doubt your eyes deceived you, then," he said, "since I dismissed him, with a handful of others, for crimes here. The others, I sent to Cefwyn. He and his sergeant slipped away rather than answer my summons to accounting."
    "Gods bless the Holy Quinalt, then! They shouted that, you know, while they burned down a Teranthine shrine, and murdered old women! I don't know what they were looking for besides the wine and the treasury, but they weren't shy about their cause."
    "No," he said, "clearly not. I'm sorry for your nurse and I'm sorry for the nuns. And I know Cefwyn didn't send them."

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    "You know nothing . You said yourself, you sent these murderers to him! He sent them back again, to Anwyfar!"
    "Not Captain Essan. He and his sergeant took shelter in the Quinaltine, so I understand."
    "Oh, so it was the Patriarch himself who sent them to burn Teranthine nuns!"
    "I doubt it, and you doubt it, lady.