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my true gift was the harp, and that he took from me."
No one said a word. No one dared to breathe.
The harper's voice was unsteady. "Now, again, he takes, if only to punish me
for the services I have done you. Killing is too easy, too transient for me
... he wants me to live forever, knowing myself alone." With effort, he
stilled his hands. "He killed
Caro," he said. "He killed the man I loved."
It was Deirdre who went to him. Deirdre who bent to him; who held him against
her so his anguish was seen by no one. In Erinnish words she soothed him, and
put me in mind of Rory. It put me in mind of
Sean, for whom I should but could not grieve, not knowing if he were dead.
Not knowing if I cared.
Ian made a sound. Startled, I glanced at him, thinking him unsettled by
Taliesin and the truth of his preferences, which are unknown within the clans.
But he did not look at the harper. He was looking out the casement into the
bailey beyond.
"Niall," he said, "is it? By the gods, I think it is!"
"Is what?" I frowned, went to lan's casement, stared out. Commotion raged
below: horses, litters, bodies, shouting. "Who ?"
And then I saw the face upturned to my own, showing white teeth in a grin. A
dark face framed by raven hair, with gold glinting from one ear.
"Hart,"
my father said disbelievingly. "By the gods, it is!"
Deirdre looked at him over her shoulder. "Were you expecting him?"
"No. No message ever arrived."
"By the gods," I said crossly, "does he require an invitation?"
And then I was gone from the solar, running down the hallway.
Gods
I
wish it was Corin
But Hart would do well enough.
* * *
I met him on the steps before he could come inside, and fetched him a hard
buffet on his bare right arm above the lir-band.
"Ku'reshtin,"
I cried, grinning, "have you spent your allowance so soon that you must come
and beg for more?"
He rubbed his arm, of course, and said something about my strength being
greater than his own, then patted me on the head. It was a habit I had
abhorred for all of my life; now I welcomed it.
"No, no," he demurred, "I have not come seeking coin, not from the Homanan
treasury." His grin was warm and wide, self-mocking as well as winsome; he
could charm the maidenhead from an oath-bound virgin, and she not regret it.
"Why should I? I have the Solindish treasury now, and the jewel of Solinde as
well."
"Well, no doubt you will wager it." I grinned again, intensely pleased, and
shook my head at him. "Have you wagered away your title?"
"I am reformed," he explained solemnly, but the glint in his eyes was
pronounced. Sky-eyed, silk-
tongued Hart, born but moments after Brennan and yet so very different. "Now I
only wager the allow-
ance Ilsa gives me, which is little enough, I fear." He sighed. "She is a
termagant."
"Am I?" the lady asked. "I thought I was some-
thing else; the jewel of Solinde, you said?"
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Hart, smiling, turned automatically, moving just enough to leave my view
unobstructed. I saw Ilsa getting out of a cloth-swathed litter, settling
lavender skirts over the tops of white-dyed slippers. And again, as had
happened more than a year before, I was struck by the magnificence of her.
Ice-eyed, pale-
haired Ilsa, whose beauty was legendary. A manifest incandescence.
We are not twins, Hart and I, as he and Brennan are, but we are closely linked
by blood, and as closely
bound by emotions. I looked from Ilsa to him, sens-
ing instinctively he was no longer the man I had known. It had nothing to do
with rank or race he was the Prince of Solinde, now in fact as well as
title nor to do with the realization all over again that he lacked his left
hand. No. It was a consuming and focused intensity directed solely in
Lisa s direction.
He had married her for Solinde. He had gotten considerably more. Much more, I
think, than he knew; certainly more than expected.
Hart?
I asked inwardly.
Has the world turned upside down?
And Rael was in my head with his liquid, golden tone.
Right side up, the hawk said.
What you sense is happiness, and the elation of satisfaction with what has
become of his life.
I
looked into the sky, squinting against the sun, and saw the lazy spiral as he
drifted toward the bailey. He was pleased to be home again; I could sense it
in the link.
The hawk's comment surprised me. Hart's life be-
fore had not been so bad, though filled with the inconstancies of wagering and
a clearly defined re-
luctance to assume personal responsibility for any^
thing else at all, least of all his title. Hart had always been supremely
good-natured, untouched by
Brennan s solemnity or Corin's moodiness. He had been, I had believed, the
most satisfied of us all even when he had very little.
Now, in eminent clarity, he had more than any of us.
Ilse smiled at us both, then turned back to the litter and took from someone
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