“That,” said Aengas, “does not sound particularly reassuring. It’s a good thing that Brother Brannan here can cook.”

“Brother Brannan? He is a monk . . . ?”

“No longer, my rabbit. He left St. Agar’s Order some years ago, but he learned his way around a refectory and a herb garden first, I’m pleased to say. If he can find a few ways to spice up your infamously bland Erkynlandish fodder, I may survive the next few months.”

“Months? You are staying so long?”

“Of course! It is not just the you-know-what I am here to see, but everything in your late prince’s collection, not to mention all the other volumes you have gathered for the library. It will be most exciting! If I don’t die of starvation first, of course. That is a serious possibility if we stand here working the hinges of our jaws much longer.”

Tiamak shook his head. Generally quiet and soft-spoken himself, he had always found Aengas a little overwhelming. Still, there were few scholars in all of Osten Ard who could touch him for knowledge of ancient books and writing.

“Well?” Aengas demanded. “Shall I have my men shove me into your carriage, or must they carry me all the way up to the castle?”

“The carriage, of course.” Tiamak stood to one side while the brawny sailors lifted Aengas from his litter and installed him on a seat. “I saw your sail in the harbor—that’s why I brought it. I said to myself, ‘That’s the Yew Tree!’ I could scarcely believe you were here in Erchester.”

“They say that old Camaris used to come down on his enemies like a bolt from the sky.” Aengas chuckled. “So it is with me, except it is my friends that I fall upon like the wrath of God Almighty, sudden and surprising.” His expression grew more serious. “I couldn’t help it, you know. When you wrote me about the . . . well, I was so excited that I could scarcely sleep.”

“Truly? I know so little about it, or about the author.”

“You will know more when we can speak in private. Truly, it is strange that it should come to light now.” He shook his head as if to clear cobwebs and grinned again. “No mind. We will not cloud the air with secrets and speculations here in the open. On to the Hayholt, my brave and precious Tiamak! And on, I devoutly hope, to an early supper as well!”

•   •   •

Tiamak, Aengas, and his helper Brannan rode the long way back up from the docks by the Harbor Road and into Erchester. The only parts of Aengas that still moved with complete freedom were his head and his neck, both of which he employed freely as they made their way up Main Row.

“Look at that!” he said. “Is that new? I swear, it has only been a few years since I was last here, but you have been building like madmen!”

“The merchants, mostly. It has been a good time for trade.”

“Thanks to our shipping confederation, in large part. The Northern Alliance has helped make the waters between here and Nabban safer than they have been in a century or more, since the Sea Emperors ruled.”

“Last I heard from you, shipping was being deviled by pirates in the seas off the southern islands.”

“There are not so many pirates making bold in the south now—we caught and hanged that devil Braxas, the worst of them, and the rest are now less bold—but other problems have replaced them. The kilpa, for one. In recent months they are as bad as I’ve ever known them—worse, I think.”

Tiamak was glad, suddenly and selfishly, that it was Brother Etan and not himself currently traveling by ship to the south. The kilpa were nightmarish things that lived in the sea. They looked a little like men, which made them worse to Tiamak than even larger, fiercer creatures. “Bad? How so?”

“Stirred up, somehow. More sightings, more attacks. They have even come ashore in some places, something I have never known them to do.”

“Ashore?” That sounded disturbing indeed. “What do you mean, ashore?”

“What do you think I mean, my dear fellow? Ashore, flopping and dragging and sticking their loathsome heads into houses where decent people live—if you can call the Nabbanai or the Perdruinese decent folk.” Aengas laughed, but it was more old habit than genuine mirth. “Something has roused the nasty creatures for the first time in a generation. It is worrying.”

“For the first time since the Storm King’s War,” Tiamak said. “That seems an evil sign. What of the Niskies? Are they still capable of—how do they call it?—singing the kilpa down?”

“Yes, when they are minding their ships as they are used to. But even the Niskie-people have grown strange, our captains say. There are days when they will not go to sea, and even when they do, sometimes they seem as confused and lethargic as fever victims. Most odd, all of it. But I should not bore you with the Alliance’s concerns. How is your clever wife? And the king and queen?”

“All are well, and you will see them all. Except your countryman, Count Eolair, who may be occupied preparing for a long journey of his own.”

“Ah, too bad—he is a good and very clean man, that Eolair,” said Aengas. “I remember when I was young, my mother would hold him up as a model to emulate—‘Think of noble Eolair!’ she would say. ‘He never squabbled with his brother over the last pie!’ For years, I hated him for a prim ne’er-do-wrong, ’til I met him and realized it was not his fault that my mother worshipped him—that he was a perfectly decent fellow, and that he might even have squabbled over a pie or two in his own childhood, whatever Mother claimed. He was always a handsome fellow, too, even when I saw him last, and he had grown old.” He shook his head. “Growing old is most inconvenient for us all. Still, I have the advantage over most of my peers, having lost most of my faculties already!”

Tiamak smiled. “You have not lost your tongue. Were any of your ancestors bards? Certainly there must be at least a little poetry in your blood.”

“If there is, I have done my damnedest to kill it with wine and the cold winds of Abaingeat. I can’t abide poets. They interrupt those of us who prefer conversation to be a sport shared between several players, not the work of a single performer who must be silently admired.”

Now Tiamak laughed. “Somehow, I cannot see you silently admiring anyone.”

“Not for their use of words, no.”

As they wound through the southern districts of Erchester, Lord Aengas noticed many things that had changed since his last visit and commented on all of them at length. The carriage passed shabby old St. Wiglaf’s Minster, which had survived the Storm King’s War and looked as though it might have been around since the Sithi fled the Hayholt all those centuries ago. They turned into Fish Way, where the last of the morning’s catch lay waiting for late buyers in the strengthening sun.

“Not exactly the perfumed nights of lost Khand,” said Aengas, wrinkling his nose.

“If you had let me know you were coming,” Tiamak told him, “I might perhaps have arranged a nicer route to the castle.”

“If I had let you know I was coming then my enemies would have heard too, and rushed to defraud me while I was sailing up the Gleniwent.”

Tiamak was taken aback. “Are you suggesting that I cannot keep a secret?”

“Not you, my dear swamp man. The Hayholt leaks like an ancient cog. I don’t even have to bribe anyone here to learn what the High Throne is doing—your servants are uncommonly gossipy, and the court’s nobles are generally in such a hurry to take advantage of their superior knowledge that they do not bother to hide their tracks. I have spies in half a dozen of their houses—no, I shall not tell you which, so do not moon those sad brown Wran eyes at me. I generally know what the High Throne plans to do within a day of the king and queen knowing it themselves.” He paused, and his superior smile curled into annoyance. “Tiamak, my limping love, are you even listening to me?”

“I am sorry, Aengas, but there is something strange going on.” He squinted. “There are soldiers in front of the Nearulagh Gate.”