The Last Light of the Sun. Guy Gavriel Kay

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      “It starts with clerics, doesn’t it?”

      Ceinion gazed affectionately at his old friend. “Sometimes. They are notoriously aloof, my colleagues across the water.”

      “But if not? If it works, opens channels? If the Anglcyn and Ferrieres join to push away the Erling raiders on both sides of the Strait? And mayhap a marriage that way, too …?”

      “Then the Erlings come here again, I would think.” Ceinion finished the thought. “If we remain outside whatever is happening. That’s my message to Beda, when I get there.” He paused, then added the thought he’d been travelling with: “There are times when the world changes, Brynn.”

      A silence in the room. No noises from the corridor either, now; the household abed, or most of them. Some of the warband likely dicing in the hall still, perhaps with the young Cadyri, money changing hands by lantern light. He didn’t think there would be trouble; Brynn’s men were extremely well trained, and they were hosts tonight. The night breeze came through the window, sweetened with the scent of flowers. Gifts of the god’s offered world. Not to be spurned.

      “I hate them, you know. The Erlings and the Anglcyn, both.”

      Ceinion nodded, said nothing. What was there to say? A homily about Jad, and love? The big man sighed again. Drained his cup one more time. He showed no effects from the unwatered wine.

      “Will you go to him? To Aeldred?” he asked, as Ceinion had expected.

      “I don’t know,” he said, which had the virtue of being honest.

      BRYNN LEFT, not down the corridor to his own bedchamber, but for one of the outbuildings. A young serving lass waiting for him, no doubt, ready to slip out wrapped in a cloak as soon as she saw him go through the door. Ceinion knew it was his duty to chastise the other man for this. He didn’t even consider it; had known ap Hywll and his wife for too long. One of the things about living in and of the world: you learned how complex it could be.

      He doused two of the lamps, disliking the waste. A habit of frugality. He left the door a little ajar, as a courtesy. With Brynn outside, the lord of the manor would not be his own last visitor of the night. He’d been here, and in ap Hywll’s other homes, before.

      Somewhat as an afterthought, while he waited, he went to his pack and drew from it the letter he was carrying with him north-west to Beda on the sea. He took the same seat as before, by the window. No moons tonight. The young Cadyri princes would have had a good, black night for a cattle raid … and they’d have been slaughtered. Bad luck for them that Brynn and his men would have been here, but you could die of bad luck.

      Jad of the Sun had allowed him to save lives today, a different sort of gift, one that might have meaning that went beyond what a man was permitted to see. His own prayer, every morning, was that the god see fit to make use of him. There was something—there had to be something—in his arriving when he did, looking up the slope, seeing movement in the bushes. And following, for no very good reason besides a knowing that sometimes came to him. More than he deserved, that gift, flawed as he knew he was. Things he had done, in grief, and otherwise. He turned his head and looked out, saw stars through rents in moving clouds, caught the scent of the flowers again, just outside in the night.

       Needful as night’s end. Needful as night.

      Two subtle offerings in the triad game, then a song, improvised as they listened. Three young people here, on the cusp of their real existence, the possible importance of their lives. And two of them would very likely have been lying dead tonight, if he’d been a day later on the road, or even a few moments.

      He ought to kneel and give thanks again, feel a sense of blessing and hope. And those things were there, truly, but they lay underneath something else, more undefined, a heaviness. He felt tired suddenly. The years could creep up on you, if a day lasted too long. He opened the letter again, the red, broken seal crumbling a little.

       “Whereas it has for some time been our belief that it is the proper duty of an anointed king under Jad to pursue wisdom and teach virtue by example, as much as it is our task to strengthen and defend …”

      With the lamps doused, there wasn’t enough light to read by, particularly for a man no longer young, but he had this committed to memory and was communing with it more than actually considering the contents again, the way one might kneel before a familiar image of the god on one’s own stone chapel wall. Or, the thought came to him, the way one might contemplate the name and stone-carved sun disk over a grave visited so many times it wasn’t really seen, only apprehended, as one lingered one more time until twilight fell, and then the dark.

      In the dark, from the corridor, she knocked softly then entered, taking the partially open door for the invitation it was.

      “What?” said Enid, setting down the tall candle she carried. “Still dressed and not in the bed? I’d hoped you’d be waiting for me there.”

      He stood up, smiling. She came forward and they kissed, though she was kind enough to let it be a kiss of peace on each cheek, and not more than that. She wore some sort of perfume. He wasn’t good at naming these woman-scents but it was immediately distracting. He was suddenly aware of the bed. She’d intended that, he knew. He knew her very well.

      Enid looked at the wine cups and the wide-necked flask. “Did he leave any for me?”

      “Not much, I fear. There may be some, and water to mix.”

      Enid shook her head. “I don’t really need.”

      She took the seat her husband had so recently vacated to go out with whichever girl had been waiting for him. In the softer light she was a presence sitting near to him, a scent, a memory of other nights—and other kisses of peace when peace had not been what she’d left behind when she went away. His restraint, not hers, or even Brynn’s, for these two had their own rules in this long marriage and Ceinion had, years ago, been made to understand that. His restraint. A woman very dear.

      “You are tired,” she said after a moment’s scrutiny. “He gets the best of you, coming first, and then I arrive—always hoping—and find …”

      “A man not worthy of you?”

      “A man not susceptible to my diminishing charms. I’m getting old, Ceinion. I think my daughter fell in love tonight.”

      He took a breath. “I’ll say, in sequence, no, and no, and … perhaps.”

      “Let me work that out.” He could see she was amused. “You are finally yielding to me, I am not yet old in your sight, Rhiannon might be in love?”

      There was something about Enid that always made him want to smile. “No, alas, and yes, indeed, and perhaps she is, but the young always are.”

      “And those of us not young? Ceinion, will you not kiss me? It has been a year and more.”

      He did hesitate a moment, for all the old reasons, but then he stood up and came forward to where she sat and kissed her full upon the lips as she lifted her head, and despite his genuine fatigue he was aware of the beating of his heart and the swift presence of desire. He stepped back. Read her mischievous expression an instant before she moved a hand and touched his sex through the robe.

      He gasped, heard her laugh as she withdrew her touch.

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