A messenger brought news to the warm, pleasant reading parlor--its furnishing chosen for comfort and thus a lack of concern for spilled crumbs or drops of drink--where Branaric Astiar, newly arrived the night before, sat on a cushioned bench with warmed cinnamon-milk in his hands.

"Riding Captain Nessaren has passed the inner watchtower, accompanied by the Countess," the messenger said.

"Please show her to the best parlor." Vidanric held out a hand to Branaric in invitation. "Shall we go greet your sister?"

Bran smiled, his eyes closed as he enjoyed the warm sunshine radiating through the window. "No, no, you go along. I feel like I just got my butt of that cursed horse--do you always ride like that? Burn it, my skull is still jolting from that gallop."

Vidanric hesitated. He had been trained to be a good host, and a good host does not insist, especially to relatively unknown people whose good will was so desperately important in a rapidly disintegrating political system.

Prince Alaerec--seated in his cushioned chair--murmured, "Would you not like to greet your sister personally?"

Bran waved an airy hand. "Not if I have to sweat all the way across your castle. Just bring her in here. If she squawks a little at first, hey, don't mind her temper, it's just all growl, no bite. And when you tell her about our alliance, why, she'll fling herself in your arms for joy." He saluted Vidanric with his cup, and drank.

Vidanric repressed an exclamation of severe doubt. He could be wrong. Branaric had grown up with Meliara, perhaps he knew his sister better than it seemed.

So Vidanric ran across the conservatory and down the hall to be at the formal parlor first. He didn't want her to arrive alone and uneasy, he wanted her to be comfortable; their initial meetings had been so disastrous, he wanted to make certain she would not feel slighted, or scorned, but honored with the very best his family had to offer. He had asked Bran on the ride, "Does she appreciate fine furnishings? Do you think she would like this? Like that?" to which Bran had always replied carelessly--and truthfully, insofar as he believed--sure, Mel loved pretty things. Sure, she appreciated being made much of. Who wouldn't? He loved it himself--could get used to it fast!

Vidanric would not dominate the room like Galdran did, standing in the middle and forcing people to flow around him: he would take a place away from the center. Yes, maybe even keep his back turned, to give her a moment to relax, enjoy her surroundings, see that the Renselaeuses were extending every possible courtesy, before he spoke. That's it. Plan it all out, stay in command of the situation. Staying in command will avoid all the disastrous misunderstandings of previous encounters--will amend them.

Within five heartbeats of her entry, he sustained that inward sickness one gets when one knows, beyond doubt, that everything one has planned so meticulously is completely wrong.

When he was young he had never shared people's delight in watching a house fall down. "Ha ha, they were too cheap to pay for their renewal spells--and watch them get what they deserve!" In Renselaeus, the spells were paid for; the guilds had to use part of their tax money to cover the expense of the extra mages. Houses did not fall down because the wood was old and rotten in Renselaeus. But he'd seen it happen a couple times elsewhere in Remalna before he turned fifteen and was sent away. There was first a sense of impending disaster; the slow shifting and creaking and trembling that built into inexorable disintegration. Some like to gather to watch--and even hope for a fire to finish the show.

Vidanric, true to his plan, felt her silence after she entered--knew from the lack of footsteps she had not entered the room at all, but stood at the doorway. Probably ready to run, he realized too late. She was not honored, she was intimidated.

All right, take command. Rescue the situation. Pointing to the table of sugar buns and fresh grapes--Branaric had said she loved both--he offered his welcome.

He might as well have been speaking some language from across the sea. Meliara demanded in a voice that shook with fear, "Why am I here?" and then came the belligerence, because though she was laboring under a total misconception, she was no coward. "Might as well get the threats out at once."

Wine. Try wine, he thought desperately. Maybe that would buy him a few moments to think--falling houses, forget that--how cute she looks in that road-worn, overlarge tunic---stop that! Feeling the entire castle was shifting about him he reached for something--anything--remembered that he had ordered an especially fine Alygran summer wine, and so absorbed he was in pouring some out, trying to get control of his thoughts (which galloped about like lightning-maddened horses) he did not catch her words after <i>threats</i>. How to get the subject to her brother? But out came yet another inanity: "Would you like to sit down?"

He grimaced--and sure enough, she hunched up even tighter. He didn't need special powers to see that she thought he was playing around before unloosing some unpleasant surprise, in Galdran's manner--the words sinister threats caught his attention, but then she said, "Bran?"

Now! "No harm has come to your brother," he assured her as she gulped the last of wine--

And that's when the house collapsed at last, words crashing about like broken boards, shattered glass, tumbling furnishings. Every attempt he made to catch at the chaos just accelerated it the more until Meliara wailed, You used me to get my brother?

And next thing he knew, one of Aunt Northa's wedding gifts to his parents came flying toward his head.

He'd endured long training in dealing with things flying at him--he didn't even have to think about bringing his arm and hand to match trajectory and thus pluck the heavy silver candlestick out of the air. What caught his attention was the extraordinary series of expressions on Meliara's face.

The desperate anger changed immediately to jaw-dropped astonishment, as if she did not believe what she'd done. Then a flicker of--could that possibly be relief when he caught it? But it was too brief to be sure: what he did recognize was the resultant clap-jawed determination--her short, thin form (lost in the overlarge Rider battle tunic in his own colors) all braced up for the reaction she probably thought she deserved.

He mastered himself enough to send someone for Branaric, who (blast his lazy soul) ought to have been there first. Or even alone. Bran arrived at the run (later Vidanric would have to ask the messenger what exactly he said) after which he made certain neither of the Astiars had questions for him. They didn't, their attention was solely on one another; he was the intruder, in his own home.

She actually threw a candlestick at my head.

Vidanric made it outside the door before the laughter took him. A candlestick! His emotions swooped and dived like a seabird in high wind: hilarity was foremost probably because it was the most immediate form of release.

I must be the monster she believes me to be, he thought as the chuckles lapped through him in waves, because here he was, laughing with no control while right behind that door Meliara clung to her brother, whooping in a thunderstorm of tears. At least there were laughs between the sobs: these were tears of joy. Tears that had overwhelmed far too much pent-up emotion--he certainly recognized <i>that</i> state--but joy was uppermost, joy at discovering her brother here, and safe.

The sound diminished; she was obviously struggling to get past reaction and to her questions. He walked away. He did not want to overhear whatever either of them would say, as he would no doubt be the central subject.

The last tremor of humor vanished when he re-entered the reading room and saw his father's observant gaze. "Did not go well, I gather," the prince commented dryly.

Vidanric said, "It shows? I had better get a grip before they return. How, father, can two siblings be so unlike?"

"So Branaric's prediction was wrong?"

"The only way he could have been more wrong would be if she'd taken bow in hands and attacked everyone in the castle—beginning with him," Vidanric retorted. "She thought I'd brought her here to emulate Galdran's style of diplomacy, and when I assured her Branaric was here, she--" He paused. "Assumed he was a prisoner as well."

Vidanric saw in his father's strictly controlled mouth, the narrowing of his eyes, that he was suppressing a chuckle. "No doubt Branaric will be able to explain everything to her satisfaction."

"Or he'll make it worse," Vidanric predicted. "Not meaning to, of course, but he'll explain everything the way he'd want to hear it, not paying any attention to how she would." He struck the back of one of his father's ancient carved chairs and exclaimed, "How can they be so devoted, and yet be so blind to how the other thinks?"

The prince gestured to the windows. "From what little I have observed of Branaric, he's as subtle as the sun, yet as warm, as steady, as predictable. He doesn't have to think, he just accepts everything on its own terms. Including his sister's love--and his for her. Just as the sun greets the world each day."

"If he's the sun, what is she? Not the moon," Vidanric said. "More like the weather." He did not add that he liked that--when, of course, he wasn't dodging lightning.

The prince smiled appreciatively, as though he heard it in his son's tone. Which he probably did. "She is very like her mother in that way, I'm told." His brows constricted slightly. "Your mother was even more longsighted than usual in staying away."

Vidanric no longer wanted to laugh. His mother had once been close to the Countess Ranisia; she'd said if she met Meliara she'd want to smother her with attention, and it did not sound like she would welcome such attention

He let out his breath. "Not sure what to do now," he admitted.

The prince flicked his fingers in the fan-sign of peace. "I'll send someone up to invite them to dinner right away. I trust that will limit any verbal damage, let us say. If you will permit me to act as host--"

Vidanric gestured deference in gratitude mode.

The prince smiled slightly. "--I will contrive to smooth things if I can."

*

Vidanric's next surprise was Meliara in a gown. She entered the anteroom to the dining chamber at a peculiar gait, her arms held away stiffly from her sides, her white-knuckled fingers crushing in a death grip the green velvet fabric of the wide skirts. She did indeed have a figure--he looked away, knowing how much she'd hate being stared at--but when she muttered under her breath to Bran (at which he flushed with unconcealed mirth) Vidanric sneaked another peek. And felt like he was sixteen again, when he first noticed girls as . . . girls. Discovering Meliara in a gown--even one years out of fashion, that probably had belonged to his mother--increased the fire of attraction, only what was this wave of something quite different that weakened the backs of his knees at the endearing curve of her neck?

He managed to perform the introductions without setting off a war, and thankfully followed his father's lead in easy social chat--weather, horses, Bran's opinion of the garden and waterfall, his room and its comfort--until dinner was announced.

Meliara had been gradually relaxing. But in the process of shifting to the dining chamber she made the mistake of heading straight for safety to Bran’s side. Of course Bran being Bran he managed in one mirthful observation to reduce her to knots and angles again. "Stop laughing!" she muttered, and then a hissing admonition that left him snickering and her hunched and glowering once again as they all settled around the table.

The prince built, twig by twig, a nest of communal comfort in this uneasily tossing tree—the success measured by Meliara’s incremental relaxing, her responses, even a smile when she complimented the dinner. From then on, as they approached and then presented the plan of alliance, there were fewer sunshafts and more strikes of lightning until at last, at last, the uncomfortable dinner was over. From the pensive tension in the prince’s usually serene brow even he had acknowledged defeat.

Vidanric couldn’t bear questions, either his own or his father’s, so he went out despite the cold rain washing across the region and took a fast ride to clear his head. It didn’t; the headache that had begun that morning was throbbing by now, but he ignored it, chose a long soak in the hot bath while reading reports, then slept.

The Astiars departed directly after breakfast. And Vidanric would no longer evade the obvious. He followed his father into the study, and because he’d woken with a scratchy throat, ordered more hot chocolate. "I've failed," he said. It wasn't a question.

The prince replied after a considered pause, “There are two observations I wish to make. The first is that you would do well, if you can, to make friends of those two. As we noted before, Branaric is that rarity, a thoroughly honest man who is oblivious to artful or dissembling converse. He has no ambition, and nothing to hide: if you ask his opinion, you will hear it, whether you become king or choose to take up the plow. Few people achieve so precious a luxury as an honest friend, and for kings it is an especial rarity.”

Vidanric made the sign of uncontested agreement. “And his sister?”

“Well, she is a different matter. She sees the artificiality that necessarily shrouds the jostling for position that is part of a court. She has been raised to distrust it, even despise it.” He paused to pour out hot chocolate, and Vidanric recognized in his hesitation, his concentration on the homely task, as delicacy: he would not go on without invitation.

In other words, Vidanric had betrayed himself. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

The prince smiled, leaning back with the gold edged porcelain cup in his long fingers. “In my experience, people only ask that question to be assured they are not fools.”

“Deflection with intent?” Vidanric asked, gesturing a feint as in dueling.

“With mercy. If you do gain—let us say--her friendship, you will know that it would be for you yourself, not your position, and you would always hear the truth. She’s like her mother in that. But like her mother, she despises everything about a court, without having seen one. So she will distrust every motivation, every intention. Especially yours, because she’s so confused in her emotions she seems to feel that if she rejects herself first, then you can't do it, which worsens the humiliation.”

“What have I done? It's true we began badly, but ever since I have tried to make amends--I even saved her life, though I would not mention that to anyone but you. I don't want that held against her in some moral accounting--I would have done it for anyone caught in Debegri's claws."

"I know. Think, son. No, perhaps this exercise would gain you a measure of clarity: review every encounter, every word exchanged with her, but in your place, put Galdran."

"What? Why? Are we not opposites in every way that matters?"

"Not," the prince said gently, "in Meliara's eyes. In her view, you are Galdran. In fact, we took a great deal of trouble these past years to build you that reputation. We always knew that your mask was potentially dangerous, and here is why: because you find yourself dealing with two people who never wear masks, who would never wear masks--and who furthermore have been raised to distrust the falsity in mask-wearing.”

Vidanric looked down at his hands.

The prince said, "She has the courage to face down Galdran--she has the courage to face down one she thinks is Galdran's creature."

Vidanric looked up. "How can I possibly make amends if everything I do, or say, is understood as evil in intent?"

The prince set the cup down and opened his hands. “My second observation is related. You will have to find a way for the two of you to get to know one another as individuals, and not as . . . failed contestant for a crown against courtly replacement for a very bad king.”

“How can I possibly do that?”

“I don’t know. But there are my observations. As for—“ He turned his head; they both heard the sound of arriving horse hooves in the courtyard below. Messenger.

Vidanric begged his father’s pardon and departed to see to business, which would not wait.

They did not meet again until evening, when the prince encountered his son on the upper level. Vidanric said, “I think I’m going to have to ride after the Astiars. My scouts report troubling sightings.”

His father indicated the object Vidanric was turning over in his hands. “Why do you have Aunt Northa’s old candlestick?"

"I was going to put it in my study."

"Do we need to purchase more glowglobes?”

Vidanric looked down at the heavy, ornate silver object. "I think--I believe this is all I need."

"Ah," said the prince. "Ah."