Free A Knot in the Grain by Robin McKinley Page B

strode off purposefully. Ruen followed.
    She did not know what she was expecting from Vuek, or from Gelther’s family; but they greeted her with pleasure—almost with relief, she thought, for Gelther was a third son, and it was obvious, although perhaps not to Gelther himself, that his father, mother, and eldest brother had begun to wonder how much longer their small kingdom could contain him. Everyone believed her story at once; or if any had doubts, they were swiftly set aside, for several aristocratic Arnish families, tiring of the Regent’s inelegance, if not his tyranny, had emigrated to Vuek, and the manner in which her subjects-in-exile greeted Ruen left no room for question. There was even one woman among these who had borne brief service as the young princess’s waiting maid, and if Ruen felt that the woman’s eagerness to prove her loyalty now was a little overemphatic, she did not say so aloud.
    Soon Gelther, and a few of the Arnish men, were out rousing the countryside; and sooner than it took Ruen to wonder what the next step should be, there was an army, forming up for drill in the fields surrounding Vuek’s capital city.
    A week before they were due to march to Arn, Gelther and Ruen were married. Gelther’s mother planned and arranged it; Ruen stood quietly where she was put while gowns were pinned on her and shoes cut and fitted, and hairdressers tried for the style best suited to her small solemn face. When the day came, Gelther took a few hours off from enthusiastic drilling to stand at Ruen’s side while the priests muttered over them and the girls of the royal family threw flowers over them, and all the aristocracy available from Vuek and Arn and the other small kingdoms and duchies who were providing soldiers for Gelther’s army made obeisances at them; and then he rushed back to his military maneuvers. Ruen retired to a handsome, well-furnished room that her new mother had set aside for her, for she was to have no part in the restoration of her throne.
    Gelther was preoccupied on their wedding night, but then so was Ruen.
    But Arn was taken without a sword’s being drawn. Vuek had a common border with Arn, if a short one, and Gelther’s soldiers marched directly to the Regent’s palace; they saw few farmers in the fields, and those they saw avoided them; the streets of the city were empty, and when they reached the palace itself, the few guards they found were sitting or wandering dazedly, and when ordered to lay down their weapons, they did so without demur. Gelther and his captains strode through the front doors without any to say them nay; and when they reached the great hall where the throne stood, and where the Regent was accustomed to meet those who would speak with him, it was empty but for a few courtiers. These courtiers only turned to look at the invaders.
    One shook himself free of the vagueness that held everyone else; and he came toward them, and bowed low. He wore no sword or knife. He said to Gelther, who was obviously the leader, “You will be Prince Gelther, husband of our beloved queen, whom we look forward to welcoming soon, when she returns to her land and her people. We wept when she left us, and turned our faces from the Regent, and have hoped upon each dawning that it heralded the day she would come back to us.”
    Gelther exchanged looks with his captains, and all grasped their sword hilts in expectation of a trap. But there was no trap.
    The Regent’s body they found, as the courtiers had found it two days before, bowed over a long table in the high tower room where he had called the storms and watched for portents. His lips were writhed back over his teeth in a grimace, but it appeared to be a grimace of anger; he did not look as though he had died in pain, and there was no mark on him. His captains shivered, but Gelther said, “The man is dead, and he was Regent, and my wife’s uncle; and that is all we need now