Free Fortress of Eagles by C. J. Cherryh Page B

streaked gray, was well combed. He wore gray, always gray, and bore the Teranthine sigil conspicuous on his chest. It was a war of medallions tonight. “Well, well, and welcome,” Cefwyn said, feeling thin arms beneath the robes as they embraced. “They led me to think you had dismissed your servants, master grayrobe.”
    â€œI have! Pottering about, moving my stacks, over-setting my inkpot…if I want ink spilled on my charts, I can do it myself.”
    â€œI can find you other servants.”
    â€œAnd spying, Spying!” This with a knit-browed glance at Idrys, who stood to the side, loquacious as statuary.
    â€œIdrys means you nothing but well, old master,” Cefwyn said.
    â€œAnd gives you his report of my reports. If you wish the state of the stars, ask me.”
    â€œI shall,” Cefwyn said, suppressing a smile. Your Majesty was almost unheard out of Emuin’s mouth. In the old man’s mind, he suspected, he was still the towheaded royal urchin, leaning inconsiderate inky elbows on precious books.
    But for Efanor, also Emuin’s pupil in former days, there had been nothing from master Emuin but a polite nod of his head, a solemn, formal, and entirely correct: “Your Highness.” Did that sting, oh, far more than any omission of royal honors? Cefwyn did not guess. He worried about it.
    But meanwhile Cevulirn of Ivanor had arrived hard on Emuin’s heels and slipped in silently, leaving his guard outside, men of the White Horse. Cevulirn was tall, thin, all gray and white in his colors, a man who might fade into mist and fog. He was not that imposing until one looked him in the eyes or saw him with horses or on the battlefield, and Cefwyn had seen all three. Cevulirn was the one of all the southern barons he was most supremely glad to have linger in the court—speaking of spies, which Cevulirn assuredly was, ready to bring the southern barons immediately back to court if the northern ones beset the king with undue demands for favors for their personal causes.
    And that well suited the king, who did not want to meet those northern demands and who looked to the south, the alliance he had once forged desperately against Elwynor, to support him most strongly in his determination to gain his Elwynim bride.
    â€œMy friend,” Cefwyn hailed him, and for two entire breaths had time to ask Cevulirn the state of his affairs, but not to hear the answer, before Ninévrisë herself arrived.
    He had not taken account that he had neglected to invite any other woman. The court, which remarked every nuance of what the king did and did not, would surely remark that particular indiscretion, plucking it out of the overheated air in the kitchens if they lacked spies among his servants.
    But he and his companions of this hall had made a warlike council in Amefel both before and after Lewenbrook. The politicking around the ladies’ court in Guelemara might be thick as bees around a hive, and the bees might buzz about Ninévrisës future status, and the proprieties of a good Guelen lady, and, gods witness, whether her simple bodice and single-petticoated skirt was a fashion to be copied or a scandal to be deplored. But the ladies of the bower never quite acknowledged the one truth most entirely unwelcome to their imaginations: that Her Grace was a head of state, not some ducal daughter to be judged by them; and that Her Grace would have been attended to this hour, not by ladies, but by four good men, lords of Elwynor, had they not fallen in her defense in an act of memorable courage. Her Grace the Regent of Elwynor had led men of twice her years under arms and been obeyed in the field and in the council chamber; but alas, alas for the gossip, on this side of the river she did not entrain family influences which might define her status with the women of this court or their ambitious priests of the Quinalt…how else could they know her worth? And, gods! her petticoats