A long silence. Too long, as Aileron’s heavy-lidded gaze remained bleakly on his brother’s face. The cheering had run itself down. A moment passed. Another. A stir of cold, cold wind.
“Brightly woven, Diar,” Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile.
They began to move inside. Both ways, Shalhassan was thinking bemusedly. They knew all along and they had prepared in two hours. What sort of men were these two sons of Ailell?
“Be grateful,” came a voice at his side. “They are ours.” He turned and received a golden wink from a lios alfar and a grin from Brock, the Dwarf next to him. Before he knew what he was doing, Shalhassan smiled.
Paul had wanted to waylay the Priestess immediately, but she was ahead of him in the procession and turned to the left as soon as she passed through the great doors of the palace, and he lost sight of her in the crowded entranceway. Then, as he fought to get free and follow, Kevin came up and he had to stop.
“He was brilliant, wasn’t he?” Kevin grinned.
“Diarmuid? Yes, very.” Paul rose on tiptoe to try to see over the people milling about them. There was a banquet being readied; servants and courtiers jostled each other as they crisscrossed the vestibule. He saw Gorlaes, the handsome Chancellor, taking charge of the party from Cathal, which now included, unexpectedly, a Princess.
“You’re not listening,” Kevin said.
“Oh. What?” Paul drew a breath. “Sorry. Try me again.” He managed a smile.
Kevin gave him a searching glance. “You okay? After last night?”
“I’m fine. I walked a lot. What were you saying?”
Again Kevin hesitated, though with a different, more vulnerable expression. “Just that Diarmuid’s riding off within the hour to fetch this shaman from the Dalrei. Dave’s going and I am too. Do you want to come?”
And how did one explain how dearly one wanted to come? To come and savor, even amid war, the richness of companionship and the laughter that the Prince and Kevin both knew how to engender. How explain, even if he had the time?
“Can’t, Kev. I’ve too much to do here.”
“Umm. Right. Can I help?”
“Not yet. Maybe later.”
“Fine,” Kevin said, feigning a casualness. “We’ll be back in three or four days.”
Paul saw red hair through an archway. “Good,” he said to his closest friend. “Take care.” There should have been more, he thought, but he couldn’t be everything; he wasn’t even sure what, exactly, he could be.
He squeezed Kevin on the shoulder and moved off quickly to intercept Jaelle, cutting through the eddying crowd. He didn’t look back; Kevin’s expression, he knew, would have forced him to stop and explain, and he didn’t feel up to explaining how deeply fear lay upon him.
Halfway across the floor he saw, with a shock, that Jennifer was with the Priestess. Schooling his features, he came up to them.
“I need you both,” he said.
Jaelle fixed him with her cool regard. “It will have to wait.”
Something in the voice. “No, it won’t,” Paul said. And gripping her right arm very hard and Jennifer’s more gently, he propelled them both, smiling fatuously for the crowd, across the entrance foyer, down a branching hallway, and then, almost without breaking stride, into the first room they came to.
It was, thankfully, empty of people. There were a number of musical instruments laid out on the two tables and on the window seat. A spinet stood in the middle of the room and, beside it, what appeared to be a harp laid on its side, mounted into brackets and with free-standing legs.
He closed the door.
Both women regarded him. At any other time he might have paused to appreciate the order of beauty in the room with him, but neither pair of green eyes was less than cold at the moment, and the darker ones flashed with anger. He had bruised Jaelle, he knew, but she wasn’t about to let him see that. Instead, she snapped, “You had best explain yourself.”
It was a bit much.
“Where is he?” said Paul, hurling the question like a blade.