Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 18:31:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kris Gibbons <bookwyrm6@yahoo.com>
Subject: SS-35

This story is a work of fiction. It contains references to both sexual and
violent behaviour, along with expressions of physical affection. If you
find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal
for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no
way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is
purely coincidental and uncanny.

This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any
form without the specific written consent of the author. It is assigned to
the Nifty Archives under the provisions of their submission guidelines but
it may not be copied or archived onto any other site without the direct
consent of the author.

I do not know how well-received these chapters are. The only clues I get
are in emails from readers. Do you like the story? Hate it? Have liked it
since its emergence? Feel it is getting too obsessive? Not Tarantino
enough? Think Evendal should take a vow of silence? Let me know.

I can be contacted at Bookwyrm6@yahoo.com

Special thanks to Rob for editing.

Copyright 2003 Kristopher R. Gibbons. All rights reserved by the author.



                     35 Amazement & Admiration

                Rosencrantz: Then thus she says: your behaviour
                hath struck her into amazement and admiration.
                Hamlet: O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!

                           Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2, lines 333-335


     Thinking himself foolish for fashioning trawlers of trouble out of
seaweed, Evendal disregarded decorum and shouted out to the hall, "Mother,
it matters to no one but yourself. Just enter, please."
     At seven span and a palm, and mayhap seven stone(151) to Bruddbana's
eight span and a hand, at fifteen stone(152), Wytthenroeg(153) resembled a
starveling child as the Commander of the Guard 'escorted' her to the
King. The escort, as Evendal could plainly see, was all that kept her
mobile and erect. A linen-coloured wool overtunic weighted down layer after
layer of winter garb, masking the true thinness of her frame. The canny,
hawk-like tilt of Wytthenroeg's brows challenged anyone to comment on the
milky overlay to her eyes. Tendrils of her white hair pointed everywhere,
the result of her head covering's mischief. With the hood of her tunic
pulled back, Evendal noted a much-healed scalp as he stood to greet the
woman and forestall the deep curtsey he knew she would attempt.
     As Bruddbana bowed, Evendal stepped forward and held her free hand
gingerly in both of his. "Whether you entered through your own main, or
entered through another's agency, all that matters is that you are here."
     "It is an insult to..."
     Evendal m'Alismogh shook his head. "Mistress Must-do, gone are the
days when weakness drew predators like blood draws sharks. And this is not
Court." He turned his head briefly toward Danlienn and continued. "Naught
but family and friends here. The habits of ten years may be difficult to
shed, but do so for your own sake."
     "Evre, I fear that in my weariness I persisted against your better
wisdom..."
     "You speak of Onkira's attempts at intercourse?"
     Though startled at the blunt query, Wytthenroeg gamely answered with a
plain "Yes." No excuse and no vacillation.
     "Inasmuch as anyone can, I have taken steps to provide a remedy and
contain her influence again. But this is not my greeting to the woman I
love most in the land." Wanting desperately to hold her in a fierce embrace
and somehow banish the gifts and curses that ten hard years had given her,
Evendal contented himself with a kiss for each cheek and a second steady
arm for her to grip.
     "Come. Sit here with us and share what passes for a day's work." So
saying he and Bruddbana guided Wytthenroeg to a rug-draped chair beside the
bed.
     The woman acquiesced.
     "Metheglyn? Kumys? Cider? Tea? Hippocras?"
     Wytthenroeg grinned fondly and requested, "Stop hovering." She glanced
up into her son's luminous face, then quickly away.
     Chastised, Evendal took two deep breaths and sat. "Is there ought I
can do for your immediate comfort?"
     "Some mulled cider would help immensely."
     Aldul quirked an eyebrow at Evendal, who almost chided him for the
implied offer of serving, and thus aggravating his aches, but caught
himself and nodded back.
     "Wytthenroeg olm'Haedroeg, beloved of Menam, Manorlady of the
Ülistrien Marshes, Mistress of Paludiers(154), I would present Aldul mek
Alinda, formerly of the Kwo-eda Paramenate, now Archate emissary to the
Throne. Likewise, I present Danlienn ald'Muirek, Heir Presumptive to
Arkedda, covert witness in Osedys for his half-brother, and Master
Scrivener."
     Wytthenroeg's brows bunched as she blinked, uncertain if she heard
correctly. An espier(155) harboured deliberately? Heir Presumptive?
     "I present Lady Sygkorrin, Prince of the Temple Archate, already known
to you. Your aide and escort hights Bruddbana megdh Borindurl, and serves
as Commander of the King's Guard. Most vital to my well-being, and so last
to be presented, my son and heir, His Serene Highness Kri-estaul
agd'Émmas-dawyl Ïnosien y Kohermarthen, pier'Vendal, Master of the Palace
Under-grounds."
     "Evendal!" Wytthenroeg remonstrated. "Do not even joke of that!"
     Kri-estaul glanced from father to grandmother and back, uncertain of
what to do or say.
     "I do not, or not completely," the King rejoined. "Let me," he stopped
and began again. "Let us apprise you of my doughty son's remarkable
history. You are familiar with his antecedents?"
     "The Kohermarthen was a dear friend and peer. We seldom disagreed in
the Game(156), but when we did it was amicable. I had heard that her only
son had vanished while at the Palace. For the surviving families, that
means he died. Such a bald nabbing marked it as the Beast's crude work, but
that is all we knew. I wish now that I had offered her some comfort or
sanctuary, but I was, myself, grieving still."
     "Over Rw-adruann?"
     Wytthenroeg nodded.
     Wanting to hold his own questions for a more private moment, Evendal
continued, "The Quillmaster's daughter, Drussilikh, pleaded with me for
some word of her brother's true fate. I learned that the child yet lived,
and surmised that the duumvirate had chosen to use the under-grounds as a
place of punition. You were correct in your assumption. Abduram did take
him, annoyed that a child should run into him, should show such disregard
for his dignity."
     Kri-estaul took over. "The Terrible Lord burned the back of my knees,
and ploughed me real bad. He told me my mother had sold me to him for being
bad. But he lied. Papa said. He killed my mother. And he gave me to a Guard
to teach me to be good. Their idea of good, I guess. They both promised to
let me go if I did what they wanted, but they lied! Papa said so. They lied
about everything!"
     Evendal sat stupefied. Kri-estaul had summarised his experience,
truncated it almost to a trifle. The child who had laboured to verbalise
precise memories of his imprisonment had changed. Somewhen he had come to
feel secure enough with current circumstance that his past horror had grown
a thin patina of distance -- had lost some of its immediacy. Considering
Kri-estaul's simple declarations, Evendal also learned that his own efforts
had borne fruit: his son relied on him for an understanding of right and
wrong. He had uncovered another way in which Kri-estaul had come to trust
him. He dared not disclose the fragile progress, lest he damage it.
     Wytthenroeg was staring at Evendal, waiting for either a confirmation
or correction of the boy's assertions.
     "It is as I wrote you. Kri-estaul but offers a tame detail or
two. Abduram took him, terrified and tortured him, hamstrung him several
times, buggered him, and then gave him over to a Guard whose spleen served
for a heart. For two years..." Evendal flashed Wytthenroeg a look as if to
say, 'We both know it was longer.' "...this my son awaited rescue in the
under-grounds."
     The elderly woman looked down at the young amputee, up at her son, and
back again. She did not say what was first in her thoughts, how just
knowing him to be alive would have invigorated his mother, might have kept
her from the fey recklessness that had doomed her. Such a 'what if' only
added a burden on the child to no purpose. Wytthenroeg told herself she
would have to be content finding what she could of her dead friend in her
living children. "My apologies, my boy, you titled him aptly." She looked
back down into the child's earnest stare. "The Beast was an evil man. You
are a fortunate little boy. How did you survive?"
     "I made friends with the rats, who warmed me as they could, and I
waited for my Papa to come. He says I was down in the under-grounds for two
years!"
     "You hoped to be rescued?"
     Though lying down, Kri-estaul approximated a shrug. "I dreamt he would
come for me. He came."
     The older woman chose not to pursue the meandering pathways of a
child's reasoning. Trusting that the boy would not see a slight in the
question, Wytthenroeg inquired, "How long has it been since your legs were
taken?"
     "Forever!" Kri-estaul exclaimed. "I have been in this bed forever!"
     "Almost a fortnight, Mother."
     "That is a long time," Wytthenroeg commiserated. "You seem to be
recovering well. For as serious a cutting as you had, you show amazing
vitality after only a fortnight's rest."
     Kri-estaul waded through the woman's words, at first expecting she hid
something cruel behind her talk, but then replied excitedly, "It's because
of Papa. Papa and Uncle Aldul! Uncle Aldul made me sleep through the worst
pain with his drinks. Nasty junk! And Papa sang the bad scabs away."
     There was no ignoring that snow-white ralur in the nest of sables, no
pretending their survival and reunion merely the result of a sourceless
good chance. Wytthenroeg took an uncertain breath and forced herself to
stare into Evendal's glowing gaze. "Tell me of yourself," she asked with
studied calm made possible by the brevity of her request.
     "What would you first?"
     The mistress of the late King wet her throat before answering. "If you
would start with the obvious. The luminance to your eyes."
     "When Drussilikh first made the existence of her brother known to me,
the need for his rescue evoked this glow. It has remained ever since and
does not impair how I see what is around me. It waxes and wanes in accord
with some of my felt passions, and has been the source of jests and
jibes. I do not understand the mechanism of it. It just is."
     "And did Kri-estaul dream of you? Or simply dream of rescue?"
     "Of me, with my eyes aglow."
     Wytthenroeg nodded her head, expressionless. "And what of these
'scabs'?"
     "Blood clots that threatened to take him from me." Evendal would not
elaborate. Now he understood his own reticence in communicating with his
mother. No talk or missive of any depth or honesty could leave the changes
to his particulars unexplored. That he was unique in nature as well as
estate blazed forth from his eyes of molten amber; it did not incite
comfort or trust, it did not invite familiarity.
     "And you learned some way of banishing or devastating them?"
     Evendal practically leaped to the answer. "Yes."
     Wytthenroeg had had enough. "Evendal, I shall not sit here, only
barely recovered from a flu, and drag words from you like some toddler
netting a sea lion. I will not waste my patience or my nerve. Tell me!"
     The King abandoned all equivocation. "I don't know where I have been,
Mistress Mu..." Evendal swallowed hard against a sob he had not
anticipated. "Little hints here and there. Aldul found me in Kul-Ger, lying
over a crate, back in Dru-stal.(157) He hitched me over his horse and
carried me out of there, without knowing what manner of man I might be." He
pulled in a harsh breath and barrelled on. "When I awoke I had no memory,
no true one at least. I called myself m'Alismogh. Aldul had to name the
provinces for me before I could guess where I came from."
     "I should think your speech would reveal your origins," Wytthenroeg
interjected tartly.
     As Evendal laughed nervously, Aldul responded. "At the first he showed
no betraying speech habits. After a day or two with me, I could have been
speaking to a Kwo-edan. Until we arrived in Osedys."
     Evendal stared at his friend, surprised and slightly embarrassed.
     Aldul merely grinned and added, "I have met such people before, who
mimic their companions' speech habits unawares. As you had intended no
mockery, I saw no cause for comment.
     "Danlienn echoed nothing of Kwo-eda. But likewise nothing of Osedys,
when sitting among Thronelanders. 'Tis how I knew him for a tale-spinner."
     "My next concern," Wytthenroeg cited. "You harbour the half-brother of
Arkedda as a scribe? You name him spy, and permit him the freedom of your
Presence."
     Evendal shrugged, still shaken. "What would you?" he
challenged. "Detain him? He was keen to poison himself ere he be made an
embarrassment to his brother, and thus would leave a wife and children to
grieve. Whenever Court convenes, Alta, Donnath-luin and Kwo-eda are there,
casting shadows, twisting and moulding Oseidh power through legitimate
Thronelander merchants and guilds. Murlesnad is simply more honest, or less
skilled, than the others."
     "And what shall Murlesnad make of your executing his aunt?"
     Now, Evendal knew, they had come to one of Wytthenroeg's real reasons
for this interrogation. "He has granted Us his sanction. In writing. Onkira
made herself most unwelcome during her exile to Arkedda."
     "Am I to understand that you intend to asperse her?"
     "Yes," he answered neatly.
     "Even the priests are anxious to attend the fetes your announcement
has incited. Did you intend a spectacle? For that is what you shall have."
     "Mistress Must-do," Evendal murmured. "You are no longer correcting
some brooding, defiant princeling. I will not be lessoned in statecraft
when the lessons are not apt. You have kept yourself to yourself for over
two winters, according to Matron Drussilikh. And while you could no doubt
instruct me in the nine-year history of Osedys's degeneration, it would be
a history of semblances only. The matter of root causes would remain
unaddressed."
     "But you have plumbed and marked your way among those causes?"
     "Well enough to act. So I do. Now, what else have you in your list
compiled from rumours reaching your ears?"
     "Thunders! I am acting the harridan! In truth... it is because I do
not know what to say to my son. I never thought to see you again. And it
broke my heart as badly as the loss of Rw."
     Evendal closed his eyes to keep from crying. "I... have questions. And
confessions to continue as well. I am become such as you may wish had not
been birthed."
     "Continue," Wytthenroeg bade. "What? Decisions you regret? Deaths
you've caused? 'Tis the wage of rule."
     "Powers and arts I've exercised." The King stared at his son,
unseeing. "The first Council of my reign was achieved against the timidity
of the manorlords and the majority of the guilds and fellowships. I had
detained Polgern, and Abduram had died by my hand my first night
home. Emial of Kernost stood in Council and began to fashion me a despot of
the worst character, in his defence of himself and Polgern. Kri-estaul sat
at my side, in a wheeled chair of Pohul-halik's construction. He saw a man
with a blade emerge from the under-grounds entry in the Council Chamber,
intent on regicide. Being nearer than the Guard, he shouted and charged the
man, and received the knife in his chest for his efforts. Guard Ierwbae
killed what we found was Emial's heir. But Kri-estaul was dead."
     Wytthenroeg laid a hand on her own chest and whispered, "Do you hear
what you are saying?"
     Evendal nodded, and snorted over a thought. "Though I abandoned my
home for nine missing years, I myself do not take abandonment well. I went
mad. I am still not completely secured of mind. All those courtiers had
watched as Emial's son approached, and none gave warning. In that moment I
hated them with a strength not felt since. I sealed the Chamber against
their escape and set fire to the stone. And I held Emial's breath from him,
kept it from him until he died. Aldul tried to reach me, to calm me, to no
avail. Finally Sygkorrin managed to breach my ward and damp my fury."
     "That must have taken a number of Guard and much preparation. Did no
one challenge you?"
     "No. When I say, 'I did such,' I mean I alone. I sat holding
Kri-estaul and sang the stones to burn, the doors to immobility, and
Kernost to suffocate. What I sing, eventuates.
     "I cried for Kri-estaul to not be dead. I willed him to live and grow
to adulthood, begging him in my grief. Though I did not sing it, he spat
out blood and breathed, complaining that he felt unwell. Priestess
Sygkorrin examined him and found no knife wound to explain all the blood he
had shed."
     "Master Aldul...?" The late King's beloved sought confirmation.
     The Kwo-edan nodded. "Both the Priestess and I can attest, as can the
Chamber walls and ceiling that are yet soot-grimed and heat-cracked, to the
truth of Lord Evendal's account. Kernost has, in the main, become an annex
of the Cinqet."
     "So," the King murmured. "That fee-grant has survived untampered
with?"
     "Yes, my friend."
     "Thank you, Kri," Evendal blurted.
     "For what, Papa?"
     "For being a good and obedient son. It would have destroyed your
Papa's heart had you not obeyed and come back alive."
     Shaken more by the occasion Evendal described than by the power it
demonstrated, Wytthenroeg waited. When her son said nothing further, she
stirred. "Is this what so troubled you? Grant me time to consider all that
your gift means. Do you expect me to treat with you as some deadly
stranger?"
     "I did not know what to expect, but I would be a fool to assume blithe
acceptance or indifference."
     "Again, grant me a period of consideration. Your son is wonder
enough."
     "True."
     "You indeed intend his advancement?"
     "Let me answer with a question. Of what mettle and mould are my
siblings?"
     Wytthenroeg smiled. "As their mother I think them of form most
excellent. Of modest seeming and temperate, teachable and with demonstrable
humility."
     "Have I ever chanced upon any of them?"
     "You have met with one that I know of. I bespoke him a neighbour's son
when we travelled to my cottage on a holiday from the city. You had eleven
years."
     "And he?"
     Wytthenroeg hesitated. "Nine and a half years ago you left an unhappy
man-child, waiting for some unconfessed mystery. Everything about you was
hidden. By then I was a year absent from the City and Court life. Then came
the time to see our fighters off to battle. You spoke little but for
inanities with me then, so I thought you still angry at my self-exile. But
there was more. You had a quiet, a centre, a gut full of secrets that
separated you from everyone, not just from me. In that you resembled your
father and myself."
     "Mother, what secrets I now contain are such as even I do not know
them. All I know of, I ever lay bare."
     "So your manner affirms. I cannot match you in that."
     "But do try. How many years had he?" Somehow he knew what his mother
would say were she to unburden herself.
     "Evendal, do not badger me, the answer serves no one."
     "And yet a third time I ask: Mother, how many years had he?"
     Wytthenroeg found her mouth responding, "He claimed nineteen years
then," and groaned in horror. With a shudder bone deep, she buried her head
in her hands.
     Evendal was kneeling before her in the next instant, pulling her hands
away to shine his gaze into hers. "I knew ere you prevaricated, dearest
mother. It changes naught, excepting you or he wish it to."
     "Oh, Evendal. Listen before I lose all strength and fail in nerve
again. He, Melloregh, is but the second born of your father." Wytthenroeg
rushed through her profession, rasping at the end.
     "And the eldest?" Evendal felt his insides quiver, uncertain how he
felt from these revelations.
     "Wtthanyl, owning thirty-six years."
     Evendal nodded absently. "A blight-year baby." Thirty-seven years
before, a typhus epidemic had killed his father's parents and effectively
ended the bloody rivalry between Osedys and Arkedda. Children born out of
that dreadful time were accounted wonders, precious.
     Wytthenroeg looked up from contemplation of her fingers. "Yes." She
waited for some indication of her third-born's frame of mind, but the glow
rendered him alien, more unfamiliar than the passage of nine years could
make him.
     "And how does he feel? Does he know of his father?"
     "Yes," the woman whispered. "I told him before he sought answers on
his own. I told him."
     "And Melloregh?"
     "Yes, he knows too."
     "How do they feel toward this intelligence? Have they complaint?"
     "Only in my treatment of them. And of you."
     Evendal brushed the comment aside in his pursuit. "To the point, as
sons of the late King, do any feel graced less than they merit?"
     "No. Wtthanyl has taken to the business of the manor and marshes,
enjoying its challenges. Melloregh..." She paused, choosing her words
carefully. "Melloregh hurt the most from my comings and goings, from the
secrecy, from having a brother serving as his parent. He runs from his
unhappiness. He is my factor to the markets in other provinces."
     "So..." Evendal drew a weighty breath to ask, "Did you love Menam,
Mother?"
     "I still do, my son." M'Alismogh heard truth.
     "Then you and I, and my brothers, have paid a heavy price for that."
He lifted Wytthenroeg's hand and kissed the back of it. "But, for myself,
the alternative would have been too steep a cost."
     Caught up in the bindings of regret, Wytthenroeg did not follow. "What
alternative?"
     "Being Onkira's get."
     Wytthenroeg shuddered again. "Loathsome child, that one."
     Evendal grinned lightly for, though the two women were of an age, the
appellative was apt. "How were you able to keep up the fiction of virtuous
widowhood?"
     The Altan grinned to herself, and Evendal saw a glimmer of the
mischievous charm she must have once held with men. "It was a total
fabrication, you know?"
     "What?"
     "The dead husband I left Alta to forget. He never existed. Had I
arrived as an unwed virgin of wealth and property, I would have been fenced
in by protocol and expectations that a widow has already satisfied."
     "True."
     "I had no desire to spend my subsequent two-score years saying 'no' to
legions of suitors. As it was, my widow's weeds deterred only a percentage
of the mongrels. So I employed another fable, one that served me well later
on, too."
     "What was that?" Kri-estaul asked, reminding Evendal that he had an
audience.
     "I let it be known that I had suffered from scarlet fever as a
girl. Which is true, by the by."
     "How did that help?" Kri puzzled.
     Aldul answered. "Many people believe that those who have managed to
survive scarletina are rendered barren or sterile."
     The lady nodded. "So those hoping for heirs invested their hope in
others, leaving me free to prosper without harassment. Although intending
nothing more than to keep myself comfortable, within ten years I became the
wealthiest woman in the Thronelands, and still am."
     "How?" the child asked, engrossed.
     "Salt," the Mistress of Paludiers replied. "Livestock need it, as do
travellers, cohorts, mercenaries, ships, and fleets. Every householder
depends on it in too many ways to name. The Temple is yet my most demanding
customer. Osedys bay-salt was one of the few exports that all provinces
were comfortable accepting from us during the interregnum. Perhaps the only
reason the whole city did not starve during the last five years."
     Evendal grinned wider. "And you not only own the salt marshes, but the
most efficient method of salt production is one of your royal grants."
     "After Mausna. After the masks came off, Polgern all but salivated
whenever he saw me. 'Twas almost the only satisfaction I knew then." She
looked up, braving the King's glowing gaze. "I'd rather have been poor and
vulnerable, with Menam and Rw still breathing."
     Rw-adruann was another cipher; but Evendal left him for later. "When
did you first become... Menam's lover?"
     But Wytthenroeg was telling the tale her way. She pulled out a pouch
from within her garb and tendered it to Evendal. He opened it carefully, as
though the contents might escape with ruinous results. "We became friends,
and remain friends. Your father was a haunted man of both virility and
discipline. Bull-headed. Infuriating. And crafty. I first permitted him to
pay court to me six years after I arrived. He knew, and I knew, he would
win me.
     "The seventh year began the typhus scare, when your father's father
and mother succumbed. Our love and our... trust in each other hardened like
cooling Kul-stone and, proven in that turmoil, showed themselves
impermeable. And it was then, also, I knew that he would wed and bed
another."
     "I do not understand," Kri-estaul exclaimed. "Didn't he love you?"
     "He did." Wytthenroeg halted, took a rough and weak breath, and
explained, "The Temple had asserted the plague to be the wages of ongoing
skirmishes between Arkedda and Osedys. With no war declared, the common
behaviour among the publicly unsanctioned combatants was to abandon their
dead where they fell as a nuisance for the other side."
     "Ewww! They must have stunk up everything!"
     "And fed the influences that spread the sickness. So, before he fell
ill, King Mellanthar proposed the union of his only son to the sister of
King Mukh'r-sidhe of Arkedda."
     "Why? What would that do?"
     Sygkorrin clarified. "It made common cause with Arkedda, rendering a
strike against any of Arkedda's commerce an assault against Osedys."
     "Why not just banish the groups fighting?"
     "That had been tried," Wytthenroeg answered. "Other guilds and
manorlords discovered 'markets of contention' with their own Arkeddan
counterparts. Again and again. I saw clearly and quickly that he could not
wed where he wanted. That did not stop me from foolishly hoping,
regardless."
     Evendal stared dumbstruck at two collections of documents. "The whole
marriage, a tissue of lies!"
     "He called it 'countering one legal fiction with another.' After the
troops had mustered out, I recovered that bag, left by him in the cottage
you found me in. Our sometime home."
     "He knew he would not return?" Sygkorrin enquired.
     Wytthenroeg shrugged. "I have resigned myself to not knowing what he
knew, suspected, or just feared."
     "What are those papers?" Kri asked.
     "A Confirmation of a Household," the King replied, still scanning the
parchments. The phrase referred to a royal grant issued when two members of
the gentry are permitted to merge their houses in marriage. "Without
ceremony, but in the eyes of the Throne and the Judex, you were married to
Menam.
     "And this," Evendal continued, hefting another leaf but sparing it
only a glance, "is an enumeration of the children sired from the legally
recorded union of civis Menam ald'Mellanthar and civis Wytthenroeg
olm'Haedroeg formerly of Alta. A list of the legal issue of Menam. Heirs
presumptive."
     Unconcerned, Evendal returned to his perusal of the first
document. "Mother, this Confirma is dated the seventeenth year of
Mellanthar's reign."
     "What?"
     "That would be... the sixth year of your residence here. You did not
know of this?"
     Ashen, Wytthenroeg shook her head. "Once I saw what its argument was,
I could not bear to look at it. And with both of you dead at Mausna, I
hadn't the stomach to make one of my surviving sons an assassin's target. I
assumed it would be dated the twenty-eighth and last year of Menam's own
reign. I saw it as an empty, sentimental gesture to legitimise all of you."
     "Far from empty, now. This would signify that you are not merely the
late King's fecund mistress, but his wife and the legitimate Dowager. Did
Menam secure some land or chattel for you in that year?"
     "My fifth year... Yes, the Triés peninsula. It gave me a place to
construct a port of my own. He insisted it had nothing but chiggers and
foul water and made a gift of it."
     Evendal coughed. "A gift? It must have been part of his own demesne he
gave over, validating this Confirma."
     "We had only just begun to banter and flirt, then. I did not know my
own heart until the next year, when the plague struck the City itself." She
chuckled, but with sadness in her face. "But, of course, he did... He
knew."
     Kri-estaul pursued his own line of thought. "Does this mean that
Arkedda is not our friend?"
     The King considered for a moment. "No, it does not... Although in all
verity I cannot be sure. I would say the nuptials served their
purpose... We are now bound by commercial accords, a shared abhorrence for
the vulpine excesses of the past, and a narrow escape from the anarchy that
Onkira invited. Murlesnad, as I remember him, was no puppet prince and
might be of a different mind."
     "What are the other papers?"
     Evendal answered, "An incomplete Dissolution of a Household."
     "I do not understand," Kri complained.
     "It lacks your sign and seal, Mother, and a date. In case you wished
to wed another?"
     Wytthenroeg nodded. "In the same bundle you will also find another
Confirma, with all the proper royal imprimatur, but only my name given and
without my signet or my seal. That script is indeed dated the twenty-eighth
year of Menam's reign. For just such an option."
     Evendal nodded his understanding, then changed topics. "Mother, for
what were you alone in that housing I took you from? Why were you not
south, tending your enterprise? Where were Melloregh, Wytthanyl, and..." He
glanced at the second of the papers. "...Llanthyr?"
     Here Wytthenroeg blushed, a hint of colour finally touching her
face. "Llanthyr, after fierce ear-bending and under protest, became my
Arkeddan factor. Ten years ago. Almost, I called him back after Mausna was
razed. Almost." The King noted how his mother failed to answer his query.
     "What made it so urgent that he root himself in Arkedda?" Aldul asked.
     To which Evendal answered, "Arkedda sent no citizen to the conflict,
and pressed no visitors to serve in it either."
     "Do you fault me for that, Evendal?"
     "No, Mother. No veteran of that debacle could honestly chastise you or
your... other sons for staying clear of it." Uncomfortable with the
melancholic look on his mother's face, Evendal returned to his
questions. "How did you come to bear four sons by Menam with no one
suspecting you even capable? And how came you to sire children by
Rw-adruann as well?"
     "As a survivor of the blight, and known for having suffered scarlet
fever before that, no one was surprised when I would succumb to periodic
weaknesses that left me confined or isolated for months. I never showed all
that much until the last few months, with each child. No one discovered the
deception, until your birthing time approached."
     "Onkira," Evendal whispered, chagrined.
     Wytthenroeg nodded. "To this day I know not how she learned of it. But
when she did, she let me know that I had permission to visit with her. I
then suffered a series of 'private teas' with Onkira wherein, I would
wager, I learned more from her than she did from me. She had immediately
assumed you were my first. That I kept it secret to preserve my
reputation. Jealous of just that repute and awe, she wanted me back in
Alta, and expected Menam to oblige. Then when her child emerged only to
die, she had me brought to her and demanded you. And you were yet to be
born! She thought I would give her you in exchange for continued residence
and privilege in Osedys, and her leave to continue relations with the man
she decided was my child's unprofessed father -- Rw-adruann. As if those
graces were hers to keep or bestow. Onkira did not care if you should prove
boy or girl, so long as no one thought her a sickly womb or the nurturer of
less-than-hale heirs.
     "Then passed several fortnights of travail for all of us. Many were
the nights I came to hate your father. The haranguing between him and
Onkira was almost constant. His wheedling and bartering for every
consideration and benefit he could get horrified me. And living in close
quarters with Onkira, watching how she treated those around her, learning
what mattered to her, was just as tortuous."
     The King sat and considered. The tale Wytthenroeg sang cohered: a
woman in love with a man who refused to sacrifice his love and well-being
for the good of the commonweal. Doubtless Menam saw no conflict beyond
convention's mindless demands. But Evendal's mother had never been a victim
in her life, had never allowed herself to be.
     "Why the pretence at chastity?"
     "It was not an effort, and so not a pretence. Menam never asked it of
me. As only three, no, four people knew of us, and as I showed no deep
familiarity with anyone in public events, my reputation engendered itself."
     "Then what of Edrionwytt?"
     "There you touch on matters that yet trouble me."
     Kri-estaul interjected, "I like him."
     Wytthenroeg smiled at her grandson. "I am glad. In my keeping him
safe, he has had no chance for friends. Mayhap you will be one for
him. That was what I thought Rw-adruann was to me, Evendal. A friend. A
friend to both Menam and myself. And so he was. But... he loved me. And I
learned to love him - almost as dearly as your father."
     "Enough to bed him?"
     The Mistress of Paludiers ignored the goad. "There was nothing he
baulked at for us. He nearly died from Onkira's frustrated anger once, when
he defied her in Court."
     "I think I recall hearing of it," Evendal mused, connecting the time
of that rumour's circuit with a series of frightening nights being the
object of Onkira's seemingly causeless furors. "She wanted rights or
jurisdiction over the Cinqet."
     "Yes. What she wanted, unprofessed but subsequent to that admitted
ambition, was her own cadre -- a niche of influence and authority in the
Court, but separate from the King's. That was when Rw-adruann professed
both his love and his knowledge to the two of us."
     Evendal's eyes widened. "He admitted his feelings and his knowledge of
Menam's infidelity in front of you both?"
     "He had remained a satellite about me for so long, Onkira's
presumption might have been shared by any observer. I had not seen his
attention for the admiration that it was. How he lived weighed mightily on
him. And he felt his haviour and motives fell within the purview of his
oaths to stay honest to his Liege. Menam seemed to understand, better than
I, truth be told. Rw-adruann became our confidante, our support. That
Confirma could have been his idea, for he always treated me as foremost
Menam's wife. Then, later, his true widow."
     Evendal felt confused, and a trifle irritated. "But 'tis a far league
from counsellor to bed mate."
     Hurting from the recapitulation of pains and losses, Wytthenroeg
snapped peevishly, "I taught you numbers! And, I thought, something of the
human heart. Edrionwytt has twelve years. Your father has been dead but
nine years. And though I did not know of this document then, I yet treated
our love as I felt it to be... I quickened by no one but Menam!"
     The King sat flummoxed as the eighth bell sounded. "But whence the
rumour? And Edrionwytt's own accounting?"
     Wytthenroeg scowled. "Initially Onkira, of course. Having uncovered
one kindling, she knew of each subsequent. But, it seems, she never plumbed
to the sire. And despite her circulated hopes, I did not die in giving
birth. So she contented herself with spurious absurdities, hoping her bait
of provoking slander might catch a carp of truth. So Rw-adruann, in
disgust, offered to grant her a counterfeit satisfaction. He joked that
report of his having been granted the rose and bloom of my favours could
only raise the estimate of his worth and potency in the eyes of the ladies
at court. I could not convince him to part with the fiction."
     She paused a moment, her anger at this forced march through the past
submerged by sadness. "Edrionwytt's birthing, like the one previous, had
turned difficult. Edrionwytt was a gamble on my part. In a gesture of
remorse for the peril I and our baby passed through, Menam voiced no
protest to my raising this, our last child. Menam dared not be but a family
friend to the boy. We agreed for him to call Rw his father, as -- in all
ways significant -- Rw was. It was Rw-adruann who saw to the fashioning of
the child's medallion." Wytthenroeg grinned slightly. "No one was
unmannerly enough to ask the unproffered name of the child's mother, they
but assumed she was of lowly birth and means, or dead. Rw and I had no
inkling that Edrionwytt possessed a slower mind than his siblings until
after Mausna. And it changed nothing for Rw. Edrionwytt was his wonder,
simple or not. He insisted that the child's heart was what mattered, not
his mind. Thunders! That such a man was laid low by those maggot-loving
rabbits."
     Gently, Evendal prodded. "You had another child after me, but before
Edrionwytt."
     Though she had woven uneasy fancies of this rapprochement with her
son, they had never taken such a strange form as this steady relentless
round of questions. A dread understanding gradually dawned on Wytthenroeg
that she was under interview by two personae with distinct motives: her
compassionate but aggrieved son Evendal, and the ruthless Majesty of
Osedys. "I... I tried," the lady grated. "She would have been my only
daughter."
     Evendal wished the ground would swallow him in that
moment. Nonetheless, he refused to fill the awkwardness with empty speech,
preferring to let time pass in silence and Wytthenroeg recover herself. The
King now had a basic abstract of matters he, as a child, would not have
understood, nor accepted had he understood. Indeed, there was much he yet
found hard to stomach.
     "Back when Onkira first had ambitions for me... did Menam grant you no
freedom from your... ordeal? Were you under threat from her and only
conditionally protected by him? Could you not have left and had me as you
doubtless birthed the others? Surrounded by your household? Then delivered
me to unsurveilled allies and thus freed yourself of even the trappings of
any offence?"
     Wytthenroeg opened her mouth to answer but no words emerged at
first. "If we had done nothing in that cardinal moment -- if I had fled --
Onkira could have rallied royal and private militia from her brother
Arkedda and resumed the plague-bearing method of warfare against
Osedys. That she put horns on Menam as well would mean nothing."
     Evendal nodded slowly. "So from the moment you heard her demands, you
prepared to barter me to Onkira."
     "Tell me what else we could have done?" the woman insisted.
     "Nothing else would have served," Evendal agreed. When Wytthenroeg
relaxed her expression of outrage, he added, "If the purpose was freedom to
continue cuckolding Onkira."
     Wytthenroeg opened her mouth to counter, but Evendal waved her protest
aside. "No, I care not overmuch how desperately in love you two were, or
how ungovernable Onkira was. Let me present her case to you, as she would
not have the cast of thought to do so."
     "To what end?"
     "Thus is some measure of equity provided." Evendal stared out at his
mother from a face turned downward, his glow slightly occluded by the fall
of his hair. "She will die, and not well. Let her have her moments. You
know, as do many, that Arkedda allows no woman sovereignty outright. So
Onkira, headstrong and ungainly of mien and so maiden still in her
generative years, an indulged yet powerless sister of an autarch, learns
she is to be consort in a land that permits women advancement. It takes no
savant to perceive what fancies must have ruled her. Lo, her young, virile
and vigorous groom even escorts her to her new haven. She stands as willing
as an arranged spouse can be, only to find herself in worse straits than in
her home: married to a man who patently cannot love her and has no patience
for her, imprisoned -- still bereft of autonomy and dignity -- among a
people who mirror her husband's unforgiving façade. Yes, she is summary in
her decisions, ruthless and reckless: she has been cosseted -- it is a
royal's consolation when denied advancement." Evendal stopped abruptly,
giving Danlienn opportunity to finish inscribing and to stare unseeing out
the doorway, soberly meditative.
     "Almost I would indeed pity such a woman," Wytthenroeg averred. "But
that is not the whole of her or of her tale."
     "No. 'Tis true for you, for me, and for her that the ends do not
justify the means. Rather do the means inform the ends. And thus did I
become an oblate."
     "Was it so dreadful that your father raised you?"
     Evendal's head shot up as he stared in shock at Wytthenroeg. "Earth
and skies witness that he did no such thing. I was nothing to him until my
majority, whereupon I became his disappointment." And that statement, for
the watchful Aldul, clarified the tenor of Evendal's relations with
Kri-estaul.
     The Manorlady of the Ülistrien Marshes stared back at her son in like
shock, for the first time utterly oblivious of his incandescence. "How came
you to that presumption?"
     Bitterness dripping from each syllable, Evendal tabulated for his
mother. "It could be from such valueless goading as, 'The next time I
expect you to have killed twenty enemies in all-out melee -- and to clean
your blade after each mortal stroke -- all within a quarter bell.' 'That
was fair but why did you not do better?' Or the habitually qualified
praise, 'Could you not have done better?' It could be his telling me ad
nauseum how I shamed him, an embarrassment of a son. It could be how he
heeded the reports of others, repeatedly. And the single occasion in which
he asked me as to the verity or falsity of such report, 'twas a rhetorical
query he did not want my answer to."
     "Who? What intelligences?" Wytthenroeg breathed.
     "Gres-lauri's, and that of his underlings'. At issue here is the truth
that he trusted everyone around him before his own son. Had he 'raised me,'
and so learned for himself whether he could trust me, he might be alive
today."
     "You exaggerate, Evendal. Gres-lauri was the head of your father's
militia; he had to be ruthless..."
      "Mother, Gres-lauri made certain I was nowhere near my father at
Mausna. He ensured that Menam's personal guard was nowhere near your
beloved, in order that Abduram could skewer him in the back and then kick
up dust for Kwo-eda and home. It was deliberate, he admitted as much before
I executed him."
     Wytthenroeg beloved of Menam sat frozen in distress, her mind racing
through selected memories while also struggling with this news. She had
thought it simply a mother's heart that had directed her exiling the most
hot-headed of her sons to sanctuary. Now she was not so sanguine. She
tallied up Anlota's vague reassurances when asked on Evendal's welfare,
Menam's odd silences, Onkira's ubiquity, and did not like the sum.
     Evendal unknowingly echoed the very conclusion she had come to, his
voice conveying the sharpness of memory's pain. "Golden eyes
notwithstanding, he presumed my worthlessness, he did not invest any effort
in my training or moulding, he did not seek to know his Heir Apparent,
because he had the freedom of other candidates who, untried, had thus never
disappointed him -- my brothers."
     "Thunders, they were right!" she hissed, her breath turning quick and
shallow in her anxiety.
     Puzzled by the reaction, Evendal faltered. "Who?"
     "My... your brothers. They misliked what they saw when visiting the
Palace."
     "They have been here?" Evendal could not credit the audacity.
     "As my messengers to Menam. No one looks twice at couriers, unless the
message borne be of consequence to them."
     "All three?"
     The mother shook her head. "Wtthanyl and Melloregh. Llanthyr could not
be trusted to take a direct route to his own bed when he was young."
     "And they grew disturbed, concerned with the conditions of my parole?"
     Wytthenroeg winced at the choice of words. "They said -- each at
different times and in their own manner - that you acted most haughty, as
one with some grievous and wondrous secret. Not cruel, but alternating
gleeful, then lonely and oppressed, enjoined to silence but suffering for
it. They saw most keenly how you could be in a room with Men... the King
and it would be as though you had fled behind a wall hanging. You
disappeared in plain view. No one acknowledged you, no one addressed His
Majesty concerning you. You sat or stood soundless and immobile. Waiting
with more dolour than the criminals in a Court Magisterial. This is a
summation, of course. I ascribed their plaints to the petty sarcasm of
their youthful insecurities."
     "And thus, only now, have you been led to what has jangled bells and
shouted 'Ware!' since I had eight years?!"
     A thread of prudence in his mind suggested that his passion of fury
was not what he had wanted of their reunion. But beside him lay a son as
haunted by ghosts bred of indifference and wilful ignorance as he was. It
was idiocy to have a whale blocking your boat only to harp and carp over
its cleaner fish.
     "Evendal, must we speak so... openly?"
     The son of Menam was intransigent. "Yes."
     "Then I begin with that plaint I loathe the most whenever it spills
from the lips of others," Wytthenroeg's voice held a strange timbre, not
wholly sorrow, nor fully anger or weariness, but some mixture of all
three. "I did the best I could for you, within the limits of the
circumstances. It was not for me, a tutor, to espy into the mechanism of
the Royal Family. Had I done more, I would have been Onkira's target then
and there. As it was, I stood under threat of her for years in order that I
might watch as close to you as I was. I jeopardised the lives of my other
children, and the King's repute, for that."
     "I do not know what to say but that, if you found her presence so
unbearable for so brief a time, how could you countenance leaving me to her
for years?"
     "I did not leave you to her! I nursed you myself, as her paps had been
too long unused after her miscarriage. After that I could think of no
excuse by which I might attach myself to her retinue. She could hardly
endure me as a reminder of her failure. Then, as arranged before your
birth, I had the instructing of you. For six years I was there, for six
years I did all I could for you."
     "Mother, I love you. You were my rescue, in many ways. But did you not
know? Or did you not dare to know?"
     "Who can answer that without sounding self-serving? It does not
matter. If I did not know of her depravity, I am blameless. If I knew, yet
again I am blameless."
     "How do you assert that?"
     "To whom could I have turned to safeguard you had I known? The King?"
     Evendal nodded at the point made, and considered matters a second
time. He had made a serious misapprehension. "It is no wonder to me now
that Osedys found itself with a glut of claimants to its authority of the
likes of Polgern, Abduram, and Pylan-drest(158). It had such a condition
foreshadowed in the manoeuvres and dispositions of you, Anlota, Onkira, and
Menam."
     "I cannot determine if you accuse or not."
     "Neither can I," Evendal replied tiredly.
     "So what mean you?"
     "Did you never learn how Pylan-drest's dreams of empire were the
motive power behind Mausna, Polgern's ambition, and thusly, Father's
demise? Or that Onkira, so eager for the sceptre of Osedys, had me use an
oiled wooden copy on her in the late hours? Or how Onkira's 'miscarried'
get survived and thrived, thanks to Anlota's royal mockery? It seems
everyone wanted to play at king-in-judgement. Poor father."
     "What? Anlota? That autocratic bitch! How? Why?"
     "Peace, Mother. I have made my peace with Anlota, well as any can. And
now as I speak with you I see my errors."
     "What errors?"
     "First, the simplest, most basic failure of imagination. Discounting
the value of others' agon(159) because it is not as immediate to me as mine
own. My heart feels pain, feels betrayal, demands redress, and twists my
judgement accordingly. Having the luxury of hindsight, actions that you
would have found impossible, my heart would claim as obvious or inevitable
-- to the purpose of avoiding my own pain and feeling of betrayal. It only
now occurs to me that I am letting the past I know dictate my actions and
ambitions."
     Thinking his speech too abstract and tautological, Evendal tried
again. "Forgive me, Mother. I could not be my father's heir and have been a
son of your household. Insisting otherwise is selfish of me and dismisses
the pain and struggle of others, as though mine were the only or greatest
infamy. Your love for Menam and his honour, and for your whole family, left
you no compassionate choice but the one you made. I only hope that the
purity of your determination proves the means that informed these ends now,
and that your children forgive me for drawing your care so excessively.
     Wytthenroeg had anticipated just such an anxiety over her other
children's kind regard. "Don't think on it so, Evre-lindal. Summon your
siblings from the five winds and I doubt they harbour any but the most
childlike of regrets or resentments. What I did is what I chose freely to
do, for peace in my own heart more than for Menam or you. And what I saw I
acted on with the best will, and fought to do well by everyone I dealt with
to the last sinew in my body."
     Again Evendal felt like crying. "Oh, Mother! I do not seek to judge or
sentence you. The past of my childhood is not for me to pass sentence on --
except as deeds recalled prove criminal in intent or effect. Certainly my
past is for me to judge, but not of necessity to pass sentence on. I only
want as few illusions and delusions as possible regarding the road-marks of
our pasts that are shared.
     "You thought me well settled in my life and training for the manly
arts, secure in my worth and my father's regard. You now know that to be
comforting illusion. By what I learned in the beginnings of our talks, I
feared that you had eschewed constancy, from despair of such an impossible
and perilous triune. Instead, my pity has been displaced with awe at your
steadfastness and ingenuity.
     "You knew a Menam who was loving and wise and tender toward yourself,
with infants, and those same children whom he perforce dealt with fitfully
and distantly. I knew a Menam who refused to countenance children in the
common passage of his days, who abandoned his son to an emasculating
devourer rather than suffer the boy's errors and confusions and needs. Our
two perceptions are hardly conflicting, Mother. Had he not been so
embattled, perhaps he might have allowed himself to love me."
     The lady seemed in harmony with Evendal until the last. A second time
her cheeks flushed, and she stamped her cane on the floor. "Thunders, you
are a dense child! He loved you, Evendal! He loved you. If he kept himself
at a distance it was because he loved you."
     The King glared at his mother, torn between disbelief and pain. "What
do you... Why? Why?"
     "Blood and swash! I did not expect to have such a talk with even this
small an audience. And I do not want to scare my grandson. Can we not delay
this?"
     "No!" Evendal ignored the incongruous nautical swearing.
     "Very well." She took a few breaths before continuing. "I got to meet
your grandparents, Evendal. With Menam's help I tended them in their
illness because no one else -- besides Temple staff -- dared the
typhus. With me they were cordial, despite their discomfort and
distress. But his wife seemed accident-prone, with bruises showing signs of
age, keloids, and bone-aches that suggested poorly healed bone
fractures. Your father, after they died, explained this to me, and showed
me further proofs. A history of his father's manic fury and ungoverned
temper, etched on his and his mother's flesh and in their family's
history."
     "What? Fear kept him away?"
     "Evendal, if Onkira had not existed, he would have found some other
cause. Had you proven the most brawn-laden, conflict-crazed brute ever born
he would have loved you, but not gently."
     Menam's son looked doubtful, though every sense told him he heard
truth.
     Wytthenroeg persisted. "You would not recall, but I do. Up until you
had six years he would often take you on processions that 'just happened'
to bring both of you to our cottage. And I would 'just happen' to be there
-- sometimes with Rw-adruann. You would hide, and I would try to find
you. Then I would hide, and you would seek me out. That was the only game
he could join us in. He could not play, Evendal. Everything he knew had
winning as its purpose, being invulnerable and ruthless. But when it was
time for your nap, he would kiss you and watch over you until you fell
asleep. And sometimes, often with me he could be sweet and genuinely
tender. With no one else did he dare."
     The Lady of Paludiers sighed. "I shall speak of this, even so. This is
what he feared, Evendal. Look carefully at my face, my son, the left side."
     The King obeyed, bewildered. Poorly concealed by a shaky application
of rice powder, Evendal saw a scar, and an odd rearrangement of bone and
muscle.
     "That is the most visible consequence of my refusing to cook what
Menam wanted during a surprise visit from him, of my arguing vehemently
with him. I have bled more from cut lips, gashes and objects thrown at me
in the midst of his rages than from all of my birthings."
     The light to Evendal's eyes grew brighter as Wytthenroeg began to
speak. It dimmed abruptly as Evendal ald'Menam again knelt, closing his
eyes, to again gingerly hold and kiss the woman's hands. "Oh, Mother!"
     "No!" Wytthenroeg barked. "Do not feel sorry for me. Nor turn your
anger on your father. We all had our choices, and continued to make them."
She looked about, momentarily nonplussed. "There are so many things I never
thought... I never thought needed to be laid out, clarified, about your
father. About us. For instance -- he would have permitted me to quit of him
at any time. He made that clear whenever he feared some crisis nearing, or
in remorse when he had so abused me. You know me in this, Evendal: I am
neither meek nor submissive, nor was I ever so with your father. And he
never demanded I be pliant and passable, though it would have been easier
on his nerves and my body had I been such a lover to him. We were two
stubborn, sometimes obdurate, wills, but respect infused all our congress.
     "I told you such...personal matters because you need to accept what
love he had for you and your brothers. He was, by all accounts, gentler
with me than his father ever was toward his mother. But he could not bear
the thought of passing on his violent heritage, of hurting any of you to
even a tenth of the degree he had known. He convinced himself that there
was only one practical way of ensuring that you did not remember him as
incarnate rage and evil."
     "If I did not get close, I could not get hurt," Evendal whispered,
chastened and sad to his very marrow.
     "Just so," Wytthenroeg confirmed. "I know not whether he saw you as
competent to rule after him. Oft a father will tell himself and others that
he but wants his son to follow his own heart. Yet all his actions, his
will, those feelings unexposed to anyone, will put the lie to such
sentiments; and what that man in truth wants is a younger manikin of
himself. I fear that was your father, Evendal."
     "Not a simple man, Mother. I yet loved him more than I hated him."
     "Then his most private fear did not come to pass."
     Evendal hesitated. "Mother, regardless of your and Menam's intention,
harm was done."
     "To whom?"
     "Onkira and myself. And less directly, to my siblings. Arkedda, as
certainly as Onkira, was played for a fool."
     Wytthenroeg gaped. "How can you assert that?"
     "Your marriage invalidates the Thronelands' covenant with the House of
Mulhassoir. A covenant entered into in good faith by Arkedda, but in what
evinced as bad faith by Osedys through Menam's machinations. Ambitious or
not, Onkira was a sacrifice, one trebly unwelcome."
     "Nonsense! She made herself unwelcome."
     Evendal shook his head. "Her personality, her cavalier treatment of
everyone, did not endear her, true. But personality is irrelevant in
this. Menam did not want her; he insulted her and her family by going
through the rites of marriage while already bound to you. He never accepted
responsibility for the ramifications of his deception, offered no
consolations and no consideration. And Osedys had no use for her except as
Arkedda's sacrifice, the lone representative of a people we narrow-mindedly
and short-sightedly consider narrow-minded and short-sighted.
     "Danlienn, have you all that?"
     The rotund scribe did not immediately answer, marking and blotting
industriously. "Aye, Your Majesty."
     With a start, Wytthenroeg scowled in examination of the young
man. "Your Majesty, have I your grace to converse with your scribe?"
     "Mother, you have Our leave to speak freely with whomever you need."
     "Master Danlienn, or do you hight Your Serene Highness Prince
Danlienn?"
     The man winced. "I acknowledge no such dignities here, Your
Grace. 'Master Danlienn' is ample honour."
     That the fellow returned volley without moulting a feather augured
well. "Master Danlienn, how do you see the matter? Do you know aught of the
lady under discussion?"
     Danlienn responded promptly, with a veneer of calm belied only by
telltale dampness on his tunic. "I recall my uncle and father often toasted
Her Royal Highness's health, but always with a comment of relief included,
such as 'health and life to her -- as she's not here to trouble ours.' She
was just a name to me, growing up."
     "And would that have been true for your brother?"
     "Of course. But Your Grace knows that what His Majesty said is the
vital truth. The Royal Highness Princess Onkira, in that moment and treaty,
was Arkedda. What she has or has not accomplished since will not lessen the
ignominy. Prodigal redress offered before it is demanded would be wise,
Your Majesty... Your Grace."
     Wytthenroeg conceded. "However much I would it were otherwise, your
advice is sound, Master Danlienn."
     "I concur, Mother." Evendal's glow dimmed. "Master Danlienn?"
     "Your Majesty?"
     "In your notes to your august liege, include the details of this
discourse. Cap the tale off with Our assessment of Osedys' culpability. It
may be that your brother knows some means by which We could atone. We would
not insult Our brother Prince with a cask of pearls where bread for his
vassals would better serve."
     Danlienn opened his mouth, then reconsidered and bent his head to his
task.
     "Speak, Master Scribe."
     Clearly expecting censure to follow, Danlienn obeyed. "Her Grace's
very presence inspires the reminder of one measure that Arkedda might
welcome without debate."
     Evendal smirked. "Fine, course, grey, or white?"
     Relieved, Danlienn mirrored the smirk and countered with a daringly
inclusive "Yes."
     Wytthenroeg baulked at her concession being presumed. "The labour is
done by my people. The product is mine to sell or gift, under that
constraint."
     "Before we apportion resources that may not be asked of us, let Us
commune with the Majesty of Arkedda. We shall wait on his pleasure."
     The Temple rang out the ninth bell of day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

(151) 5 ft. 6 in. and 98 lbs.
(152) 6 ft. 4 in. and 210 lbs.
(153) Chapter 14
(154) Swamp workers, salt farmers.
(155) http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/SOU_STE/SPY_from_to_spy_or_espy_0_Fr_e.html
(156) The Game of Court: The playing of chess with living people and groups.
(157) ~Approximates the month of October in the northern hemisphere.~
(158) The Late Militia Comptroller; chapter 10.
(159) Grk. - Contest, conflict, personal trial or psychomachia.