CHAPTER 20
Allystaire, Gideon, Harrys, and Norbert returned from their early morning run, only to find Rohrich busy setting up his wagon already, his guard Myron leaning sleepily against it, arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Ah, Sir Stillbright,” Rohrich called, waving, as they neared the green. “I see you’re a fellow for the morning as well. A lie-in puts no weight in the purse, as they say.”
Allystaire chuckled politely. “It is not really the purse we are putting weight on,” he said, shifting the stone he carried to his other shoulder.
“I should say not. Once you divest yourself of your burdens come speak with me of books, if you would. It’s a fine morning and we’re likely to have privacy for some time.”
“Seems reasonable,” Allystaire admitted. The four of them went to pile their stones by the Inn, and Allystaire looked back to the peddler, who was busy hauling the strongbox full of books out of the wagon. He said, “Harrys, give Norbert work with spear, if you would. I will be along presently.”
The old soldier nodded, turning an evil-looking grin on the taller Norbert, who smiled defiantly back. “I’m gettin’ faster, old man,” he said.
“Not fast enough, unless y’come upon me in m’sleep,” Harrys said, and the two walked off together towards Torvul’s carefully maintained armory.
Meanwhile, Allystaire mulled the books over in his mind. Beside him, Gideon, typically so hard to read, practically vibrated with hunger for them, he could see. His wide eyes stared hard at the strong box, focused on it to the exclusion of all else. Cold, he thought, it would be nice to have something new to read of an evening. Maybe to discuss with the boy. But the thought of the cost made him wince.
“Books are very expensive here,” Allystaire muttered dutifully to Gideon as they made their way to the wagon. “Most of the folk in the village will not benefit from them, so we must bear that in mind.”
“If most here aren’t lettered, we ought to be changing that,” Gideon said as they neared the peddler. “Teaching them.”
“I can teach anyone to ride, hunt, fight, joust, and something of history and geography and heraldry,” Allystaire said. “I have no idea how to teach someone to read or cipher.”
“Mol probably can. As could I,” Gideon said with a shrug. “Torvul has a library, but most of its in Dwarfish marks. There are so few other books in the village.”
“Well, I can fix that,” Rohrich said, overhearing their conversation and theatrically pulling back the cloth cover of the volumes in his strongbox. “I have another box as well, smaller than this, though,” he said. “You’ll find here a history of the Baronies compiled by an Urdaran monk, spoken aloud to a scrivener,” he began, pulling free a thick volume with a blue cloth cover and wooden bindings holding the leaves together. “Great ones for history and the recordin’ of it, the Blind Monks. I’ve a history of Keersvast and the Islandmen as well. Books of poetry and romance. An herbiary.”
As he spoke, the peddler’s hands moved deftly among the books, pulling free now the largest of them and untying the leather thongs holding it shut. He turned back to the green-dyed leather of the cover to reveal a beautifully illuminated page identifying a plant, with tiny, closely-set words describing the uses of its leaves, stem, and root. Allystaire would’ve had to lean close to read it.
“Meant to be read with a glass or a crystal, which I can provide, of course.”
Allystaire had been half-listening to Rohrich’s words and half-pondering what Gideon had said. The boy stepped forward to look at the herbiary, looking to Rohrich for permission before carefully turning a page.
“Gideon,” Allystaire suddenly said, “would you do me a favor? Go to my room in the Inn. My purse will be on the table. Bring it here.”
The boy looked reluctantly up from the book, but nodded and dashed off.
“Your son?” Rohrich asked as he carefully closed and tied the herbiary shut and slid it back into the chest.
Allystaire mulled the question a moment, then answered, “Yes,” with a faint smile.
“Must favor his mother then,” Rohrich offered. “Nothin’ meant by it o’course, Sir Allystaire,” he quickly added.
Allystaire laughed. “You have no idea how right you are, goodman peddler. If you would be so kind as to let us examine the other chest of books, I would appreciate it.”
By the time Rohrich had roused Myron and had him haul forth a similarly sized strongbox of books and bring it forth, Gideon had returned with the pouch. As the peddler was opening the second chest, Allystaire reached in with two fingers and felt them close around a slip of parchment wrapped around two hard ovoid shapes. He pulled it free, unrolled the parchment in the palm of one hand, and held forth the two clear, beautifully faceted topazes that had once adorned the golden mask of the Archioness Cerisia.
Allystaire made sure to let Rohrich see them, moved them about in his palm so they caught the morning sunlight. The merchant’s jaw dropped just slightly, but he caught himself and quickly composed his features.
“Two gems, two chests of books. It hardly seems a coincidence, eh?” Allystaire grinned. “We will have the lot.”
* * *
Allystaire found Mol expecting the books, practically cooing and giggling over them as he delivered the boxes to the Temple. He had managed a box easily enough. Gideon insisted on carrying the other, straining and puffing by the time they reached the doors and he could set it down without losing face. Mol had opened the door to meet them.
“We will need to find a safe, dry place for them,” he was saying, “away from any open flames.”
“I will speak with the Wit of how best to safeguard them,” Mol said brightly. “He has had a lifetime of doing so, after all. And then I will begin to sort out which books I might use to teach folk their letters.”
“Many of those will probably be too difficult for the totally unlettered,” Gideon said.
Mol held up a hand to forestall them. “All that will be required is patience and material. I have great reserves of the former and now enough of the latter. It will do. The two of you have work to be about.”
Allystaire nodded, thinking for only the barest moment how odd it was to hear a girl of Mol’s age speak the way she did, and order him about. And yet it wasn’t odd at all.
“She is right, Gideon,” he said. “I should be off to practice with Harrys and Norbert. You are welcome.”
“That is not what I meant,” Mol said. “It is time for our guests to leave. Excepting any that wish to stay, of course. Some will. But it is important that Landen, Chaddin, Garth, and Audreyn all begin their varied ways home. They have parts to play in what is to come and it is time they began.”
“In that case,” Allystaire said, “I ought to get my armor on. Make it look official.”
“You’re a paladin with or without the armor,” Gideon pointed out.
“I think it is just Torvul rubbing off on him,” Mol said, smiling. “He’s embracing the showmanship the Wit is always on about.” She reached out and plucked at the plain, thick homespun Gideon wore. “It would not harm you to do the same. Wear your robes once in a while. Carry your staff like a proper wizard.”
Gideon lifted his chin. “I am not a wizard. And staves are props, nothing more.”
“A staff is also one of the most versatile of weapons if a man knows what to do with it,” Allystaire pointed out. “And wizard or not, Gideon, that is how the folk see you. How they need to see you.”
“You underestimate them,” Gideon countered.
“The folk you live among are one thing. The folk we meet in the world will be something else entirely. Please,” he said, “do as Mol suggested. Meet me at the gate by the Oyrwyn camp in half a turn.”
“Thank you for the books,” Mol said, but something in how she said it let them know they were both dismissed to other business, and they went without question.
* * *
Andus Carek walked out of the Inn at mid-morning feeling fulfilled. Idgen Marte had been gone when he woke, and in fact, he hadn’t heard or seen her leave. Hadn’t even stirred, which was odd, for a life on the road practically demanded light sleeping and pert ears.
Even so, he had slept well, if not overly much. He planned to take a turn of the grounds, as it were, the pocket of his hooded, lined cloak stuffed with parchment, ink, and pen. There were songs to be mined here, tales to be metered and given melody, and those would be his tools. Nothing concrete today, just a few words, an image, perhaps a sketch of a run of notes if they occurred to him.
Even the cold of the air couldn’t hurt his mood. That these northerners were calling the day spring was no more baffling than anything else about this country made of stone and frozen mud.
He’d taken only a couple steps out of the Inn when a knight of legend stepped out behind him.
The paladin still wasn’t a man overly fair to look upon. A certain charm in his jawline once upon a time, perhaps, before it’d been knocked around so much. His nose hadn’t had the decency to break in a picturesque way, and the tiny scars around his eyes that one could only see when close didn’t add a mystique the way dueling scars back home might. His hair was shot with grey and clumsily hacked at till it was out of his eyes and off his ears and neck, and he was scrupulously clean-shaven when his face could have benefited dramatically from a decent beard. He wasn’t even particularly tall; his thick chest and shoulders gave him the aspect of a bear walking around hunched over and angry.
And yet standing there with the sun beaming off his mirrored armor, even as Andus Carek saw and catalogued the faults of the man, soon all he could see was the Paladin. Despite his keen eye for detail it was as if such things as the man’s height, age, and features eluded him. There was a man in there somewhere, but Andus Carek, for all his worldliness, for all that he knew of song and legend and the often slanted ratios of truth and lie that went into them, could only see the hero.
Momentarily, he was afraid. Andus Carek generally thought of himself as a decent enough person; it didn’t pay to steal from the crowds that fed you, and though he carried a knife on his belt and one in his sleeve, and had a cudgel in his bags, he preferred never to employ them. He knew he’d given the paladin no reason to look askance at him, much less to threaten him. And yet for a brief instant he feared the man. It passed with a calm breath and the realization that what he feared was the possibility of making this man his enemy.
Andus Carek made a note that, no matter what ends his own moral code might stretch to, he ought never to stretch it too far in front of Allystaire Stillbright.
Then the name and the significance of it in the armor he was now staring at a reflection of himself in dawned on him, and he laughed.
“Are you well, bard?”
The paladin’s voice, now that was a thing worthy of the stories, Andus Carek thought, and it was something apart from his face. It was a voice for a more handsome man; a voice equally at home on the battlefield and the court. Probably not musical, but powerful, resonant.
“Pardon me, Sir Stillbright,” Andus Carek said, and he bowed low in his best courtly manner. “It is not every day that one is confronted by a walking legend before one has properly broken fast.”
“We tend to start our days early, Andus Carek,” the paladin said, “which may be why you have not found any food. And a walking legend? I am a man, I assure you.”
“The armor and the hammer say differently, Sir Stillbright. And I daresay ‘Stillbright’ is less a family name and more of an appellation befitting some act of derring-do.”
The paladin looked for a moment as though he were about to respond, but thought better of it. “The name is the work of the Mother’s Wit, Mourmitnorthrukacshtorvul.”
“The dwarf? What do you mean by the Wit?”
“The same,” Allystaire said, and then smiled. “And surely, Andus Carek, you did not think that the Mother had appointed only an Arm?” The smile faded, and he nodded lightly, never lowering his eyes, excusing himself. “If you will excuse me, I must be off.”
Andus Carek cleared his throat. “I hope, Sir Stillbright, you would not object to my following behind you. At a respectable and non-interfering distance, of course.”
“What about breaking fast?”
The bard smiled. “When songs beckon, the needs of the flesh must wait.”
“It is a free village. Follow me as you will.” With that, the paladin turned on a heel and walked on, his armor and the hammer at his side flashing in the sunlight.
When they reached the gate at the southern end of the village’s track, the youth with the prodigious talent for languages was waiting for them, only he’d traded his villager’s garb for a robe and was carrying a long wooden staff. The robe, Andus Carek thought, was the color of a certain kind of sky as dawn had just begun, almost invisibly, to overtake the dark.
By the time they had walked out the gate, the bard was scribbling furiously on a scrap of parchment folded in his hand, carefully managing both ink bottle and pen in the other.
A paladin and some sort of wizard prodigy. It was, Andus Carek reflected, almost too much.
“What is it that the two of you are out to do today, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”
“Today?” The paladin stopped in his tracks and flexed his hands inside the lobstered steel of his gauntlets—the left example of which left the palm of his hand curiously bare. The bard noted it, reminded himself to inquire, delicately, later. “Today we are trying to end the Succession Strife.”
Andus Carek hoped he had brought enough parchment.
* * *
Allystaire and Gideon’s entry into the Oyrwyn camp drew a fair share of stares and some muttering. Given that the nights were no longer likely to kill them with cold, most of the Delondeur men had moved back to the now properly equipped tent. The sight of Allystaire armored as he’d been during the Battle of Thornhurst sent a larger ripple among them, with a few dashing quickly out of his path.
By the time they’d reached the central pavilion, Garth and Audreyn had come forward to meet them. The Lord of Highgate wore his own distinct armor, green enameled scales, while Audreyn wore a matching dark green dress, lined with strips of brown fur, and sealskin boots, though she had dispensed with the enormous bear fur she’d been wrapped in during the colder weeks.
“Brother,” Audreyn said, her tone bright and yet biting. “To what do we owe this visit? They have been infrequent enough.”
Allystaire sighed, lowered his eyes to the ground. “I am sorry, Audreyn,” he said. “You are right. There are so many things that need doing I could abandon sleep altogether and still lack for time.” In truth, her fairly gentle jibe shamed him, and he felt his cheeks flush a bit. Aside from a few dinners and the odd ride, he’d seen little enough of his sister despite her presence nearby for months.
She stepped forward and laid a gloved hand carefully on a bracer. “Allystaire, I am used to having only the time with you that the wider world allows me.”
“I should have gone about changing the world a long time ago, then.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “I should have been more present in your life. No child deprived of her parents so young should have been raised by tutors and a brother she saw for less than half a year. I am sorry that I did not see it then. I am sorry that I made war the dominant fact of your existence for so long.”
Audreyn stepped forward and slipped her arms up around his neck, awkwardly embracing her brother around his armor. Stiffly and slowly he slid an arm around her back.
“You did not make it that way, brother,” she murmured to him, then stepped back. “You could not have changed it.”
“I could have tried. I should have tried. And I am Cold-damn well going to try now.” He slipped his arm from around his sister’s back and looked between her and Garth. “The snows are melting, the roads are clearing. It time for everyone to start moving.”
Garth nodded, shifted his feet, scales rattling a bit. “I know. I’ve given orders to start breaking down the camp, preparing the horses and supplies for the return. Be a bit tricky figuring what passes to take.”
“I can help with that,” Gideon offered. “Before you leave, bring me a map. I will mark upon it what roads and trails are clear. Mol can give you some idea of any weather that might change what I tell you.”
“How are you going to do that, lad?” The knight bent down towards the much shorter Gideon, hands resting against his legs. Garth’s voice was, for a moment, so patronizing Allystaire felt a surge of anger, but he forced it away with a chuckle.
“My name is Gideon, and I would prefer you call me that,” he replied calmly. “And I will do it by projecting myself into the air using the Will I absorbed when I destroyed the sorcerers Iriphet and Gethmasanar. And if you do not believe I am capable of it—as your tone implies you think I am an idiot child—you are welcome to try and stumble home with no more prospect of reaching it than a drunk trying to board a rocking boat on a moonless night. However, for the sake of your wife, whom Allystaire clearly loves even if he will not say so, I strongly recommend that you listen to my advice.”
For a moment, the only sound was the furious scratching of Andus Carek’s pen on the parchment flat against his palm.
Garth looked too surprised to be angry, while Allystaire and Audreyn shared a laugh at his stunned silence. The pale knight’s cheeks colored easily, but Audreyn laid a hand on his armored shoulder and smiled winningly up at him, which seemed to calm him.
“Gideon is the Will of the Mother, Garth,” Allystaire said. “He is not bound by the same limitations as you or me. If he tells you can do a thing that sounds impossible it is because he can. Trust me.”
“I will,” Garth said faintly.
“Now,” Allystaire said, with an air of returning to business, “I am not here to try and kick you off the village land. Yet it is time to be leaving, yes. But tonight, come to dinner. I am sure Torvul can be persuaded to prepare something special. And I have some letters I would like to give you. To take to Wind’s Jaw.”
“Letters for whom?” Garth’s brows furrowed.
“We will take them,” Audreyn said, offering Allystaire a knowing look, her brows raised, head slightly inclined. “I’ll explain later,” she muttered to Garth.
Allystaire offered his sister a smile and the pair of them another shallow bow, the kind where he didn’t break eye contact, more an inclination of his head than anything else. “Lord and Lady of Highgate, if you will excuse me.”
Garth extended his hand, which Allystaire clasped in a clatter of metal on metal. Audreyn rose up to kiss his cheek, a gesture he returned awkwardly, as if he were unused to it.
They parted, Gideon sighing in frustration.
“Patience, son,” Allystaire said. “Many people are going to have trouble taking your words literally.”
“Where are we headed now?”
“Landen and Chaddin,” Allystaire said.
From behind them there was a delicate clearing of a throat. Allystaire turned to find the bard, the fingertips of his parchment-clutching hand pointed upwards, palm out, as if asking permission to speak. Allystaire nodded, looking for a moment at the lines of ink scrawled, neat but too tiny to read.
“If I may, Landen and Chaddin? As in Landen Delondeur?”
“Yes,” Allystaire replied. “As in the Baroness Delondeur. And her Lord Magistrate and newly legitimized half-brother.”
Andus Carek made a quick dash. “And, ah, Will of the Mother…”
“There are five of us, Andus Carek. She named me her Arm. The Will,” he said, pointing to Gideon. “The Voice, the Shadow, and the Wit make up the rest.”
“Fascinating. And they are?”
“You will not miss them, I promise you,” Allystaire said, smiling faintly. “In fact I believe you are well acquainted with the Shadow already.”
The bard lifted his head from the paper, his dark eyes narrowing, crinkling the skin around them. “Idgen Marte?”
“The same,” Allystaire replied. “The Voice will be the only child you see going barefoot through the snow. And talking to your horse if she has a mind to. And the Wit, well,” Allystaire’s smile widened. “He will have plenty to say to you. He has plenty to say to everyone.”
“Why those titles? Why those symbols?”
“I am not the man to ask,” Allystaire said, then he raised his left hand to forestall the inevitable question he could see the bard forming.
Andus Carek couldn’t quite help himself. “Why the bare palm?”
Allystaire’s eyes narrowed. “The questions are becoming burdensome.”
The bard placed the back of his hand against his lips, nodded firmly.
The paladin set off again, Gideon at his side and the bard two steps behind and silent once more.
Allystaire was a good deal less formal when it came to the Delondeur lords. He stuck his head inside their tent, and called out, “Landen, Chaddin. Dinner this evening in the village, if you would be so kind.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode off.
Gideon looked up at him, frowning. “That was decidedly less cordial than how you dealt with the Lord and Lady of Highgate.”
“The Baroness Delondeur and the Lord Magistrate are not my sister and her husband, who I have known on his own account since he was seven years old.”
“One would imagine that familiarity would encourage you to be less formal.”
“I do not want Landen or Chaddin to think that this meeting is optional.”
“And you thought if you showed the same attitude to Audreyn and Garth they might bristle?”
“Not merely that,” Allystaire said. “I owe both of them debts I am not in a position to repay. The least I can do is show them courtesy.”
“We should strive to do more than the least.”
“I know, Gideon,” Allystaire replied, pausing and lifting a hand to his face. “I know. I left them under difficult circumstances. I have not been able to…” He shook his head with a sigh, and said, “Enough. Let us go collect the rest of our dinner guests.”
“Who?”
“The Archioness. And, I think, one more, though I do not know where to find him.”
* * *
Cerisia was perhaps anticipating Allystaire’s visit, given that the door of the room she’d occupied for the winter was open and she was packing.
She stood, smiled slyly. “Sir Stillbright. I was beginning to think—”
“I had forgotten you. I have not, Archioness, I assure you. Yet there are many demands on my time.”
“I know, Allystaire,” she said, her smile expanding and warming her features.
“I was hoping you would join me for dinner this evening,” Allystaire said. Her eyes widened, just a touch, a careful, optimistic expression. “Along with the rest of the Mother’s servants, the Baroness Delondeur and her Lord Magistrate, and the Lord and Lady of Highgate and Coldbourne.”
Her expression wavered, but if he hadn’t been watching her carefully he probably wouldn’t have noticed. It was there, and gone, a flash of some kind of hope appearing in her features and then being shoved aside. He was grateful, in that moment, that he’d asked Gideon and Andus Carek to wait in the taproom below.
“Am I to be shown the road, then?” she asked lightly, her tone making it a jest.
“The snows are melting. If you want to make the Vineyards in good time, the journey is best started soon.”
“Am I to go alone?”
“I have some thoughts on that score,” Allystaire said. “I think that the warband that helped to defend Thornhurst, the Iron Ravens, could be hired to accompany you, if you wished. I also believe that the Will of the Mother can help to make sure that the way is clear.”
“I don’t suppose it is possible that the Arm of the Mother might escort me himself,” she asked, smiling faintly, her eyes knowing the answer, asking anyway. “Your presence would provide a good deal of negotiating leverage. And it would impress Hamadrian Innadan.”
Allystaire shook his head very lightly. “You know I cannot leave Thornhurst now. If we can get the Barons to a peace congress, as I have suggested, I will be there.”
She sighed faintly, rested one hand on her white-gowned hip, the jewelry on her fingers catching the silver and gold threads woven into the fabric. “You are a compelling man, Allystaire Stillbright. And a stubborn one.”
“You are a compelling woman, and beautiful. I would never deny that. But I am committed elsewhere.”
“A goddess is not a lover, Allystaire.”
He tried to keep his face blank, impassive, but he felt color rise in his cheeks, hoped the many weeks spent in the morning sunlight had darkened his skin enough to hide it.
Cerisia’s suddenly indrawn breath told him it hadn’t. “Truly?”
He nodded very slightly, unable to meet her eyes for reasons he couldn’t have explained.
“How?”
“I am not much of a theologian, Cerisia,” he quipped.
She laughed lightly, breaking some of the tension, and he met her eyes again.
“Stop,” she said lightly. “I do not want to compete with a Goddess. Not so literally. And it’s not as if we are doomed lovers in some ballad, separated by war and politics and blood. We could have dallied.”
“I do not think I have ever been a dalliance,” Allystaire said. “I should have liked to try it. Alas.” He shrugged. “I do know, Cerisia, that Thornhurst and the Mother’s folk are in your debt. For what you did in the battle, and for what you will go to do now. If I can repay it, I will.”
“There are people in the Baronies who worship Fortune as well, Allystaire. And She has not been kind to them these two score years and more. If I can correct that, I should. As for the battle, it was clear that Lionel had become a monster, even before the sorcerers made him one in the flesh. To not oppose him was to endorse him, and that I could not do.”
“Even so,” Allystaire said, “you will always have the option of the Mother’s refuge and protection. I do not pretend that I can convert you, but Thornhurst and the Temple will never turn you away. In fact,” he said, laughing, “you just bought the village the start of a library.”
“How did I do that?”
“The gems you left back in the autumn. I traded them for two strongboxes full of books.”
“Are there enough lettered folk here to make use of them?”
“There will be once the Voice is done with them,” Allystaire said.
She smiled. “The uprising comes on leaves bound in wood and leather. It was much the same in Keersvast once, when the First Captains ruled it like princes. A man or a woman who can read and write is a good deal harder to swindle.”
“The Old Baron Oyrwyn insisted that all of his knights knew how to read, write, and cipher,” Allystaire said, “for much the same reason, I believe.”
“Do you mean to make knights of all the village folk, then?”
“No,” Allystaire said, “but knowledge cannot be exclusive to knights.”
“So you’ll put weapons in their hands and ideas in their heads. Do you not see how this can go wrong?”
Allystaire let out a harsh laugh. “Of course I can. I see almost nothing but the paths that veer into chaos and failure and death. Yet if I did not try to find the one path among them all, no matter how narrow it might be, how shrouded, that leads to something better, then I would be no paladin.”
Cerisia sighed and smoothed down the front of her dress, one hand coming to rest on her hip. “And may Fortune favor me, that’s probably why I’m letting myself be dragged into this, if I were to be honest. I do want peace, believe me,” she said, raising a hand to deflect his protest. “But I have heard other men speak of peace. Hamadrian Innadan wanted a peace congress, years ago.”
“I know,” Allystaire said. “I was there. For a fortnight we drank his wine, rode at one another with tourney lances instead of real steel for a change, and pretended to listen to what he said.”
“My Temple did not even send a delegation,” she said. “My predecessor felt it too unlikely to succeed, and that we should not be seen favoring it. The Temple of Braech sent a warlike Marynth and a troop of Dragon Scales simply to let everyone know how thoroughly they disapproved of the idea of peace. And this was at a meeting called by one of the most powerful Barons. Certainly the most respected.”
“I know,” Allystaire repeated, “I was there.”
“I am still coming to my point,” Cerisia said, a bit sternly. “Which is that the same idea was mooted not long ago by a man of vastly more wealth, influence, and standing than an exiled lord in a village so distant from the Dunes that many folk in Londray don’t know where to find it. And yet, you have one Baroness on your side already, you will find Innadan a willing second, and Telmawr will do as Innadan does. The man who is now the most powerful lord in Oyrwyn second to the Baron himself will do whatever you say out of sheer love for you, and he alone might sway Gilrayan Oyrwyn to this cause. And you have an Archioness of Fortune’s Temple carrying your messages. I’d say you’ve already done better than he did, with less.”
“I have the Mother. I have Torvul, and Idgen Marte, Gideon, Mol.”
“And all of that is considerable,” Cerisia agreed. “Yet I say all this to point something out, Allystaire. All your life people have wanted to do as you have asked, or ordered them, because there is something in you that they want to follow. And that is the most dangerous thing about you. You may be able to start something grand, but I do not know that even you will be able to control it. Please keep that in mind.”
“I do not want an uprising, Cerisia. Blood will not be the answer. If I must lead a crusade I will make it a crusade for peace.”
“And I fear,” Cerisia said, voice low, eyes sad, “that the world will not allow you that.” She sighed, gave her head a tiny shake, let her eyes linger on his a moment, and then made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go. I must finish packing. How soon can you have documents ready for me?”
“Tomorrow,” Allystaire said.
“That eager to be rid of me?”
“The world has been moving on outside these walls, Cerisia. We must meet it.”
“And what are you going to do while I go negotiate your congress into existence?”
“Build the Order of the Arm. Keep the Mother’s folk safe. Whatever I have to.”
Allystaire bowed to Cerisia then, a deeper and more formal gesture than he had made before. Restricted somewhat by his armor, it was as courtly a gesture as he could manage, and she smiled to see it. She watched him as he backed out the door and closed it, then returned to her careful packing.