“No,” said the Arobern, looking at her.
“Well, then I bring you that word,” Mienthe said simply. “We don’t know why they are so horribly determined, but we think—that is, I think—”
“We,” said Tan quietly, the first time he had spoken.
Mienthe nodded, grateful for his support. “Maybe it’s not so, but we think it’s something to do with the book and the magic of law it held, and we think there were Linularinan agents still behind us in the pass. Maybe three hours behind? Just at the crest of the mountain when we had reached the iron gates. Though it might not have been—that is, honest travelers might also have come behind us by chance.”
The Arobern looked at Mienthe for a moment. Then he studied Tan for a much longer moment. At last he said to Beguchren Teshrichten, “What do you say, hah?”
The small man gave his king an impenetrable look and then glanced up at the tall man with the quirk of one frost-white eyebrow. He asked, “Gereint?”
The tall man looked carefully at Mienthe and then glanced at Tan, though he looked away again at once with a slight wince. He took a deep breath, shrugged, and said to Beguchren, his voice exactly as deep and gravelly as Mienthe had expected, but somehow not harsh, “I don’t know whether the honored lady is a mage. I’m looking right at her and still I can’t tell. I told you how oddly magecraft has been behaving of late. That may be interfering with my perception. I look at the honored lady and sometimes I think she’s a mage and sometimes I think she’s nothing like a mage.” He glanced at Tan once more and away.
“But the man?” Beguchren Teshrichten said patiently.
“Oh, well… the man. I don’t think he’s a mage; that’s not what I’m seeing. But forces are not simply bending around him as they bend around a mage.” Gereint pointed one powerful finger at Tan, who flinched just perceptibly. “Forces—events—every chance in the whole world is twisting, distorting, and folding right there. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never heard of anything like it. I can’t think of a single passage in Warichteier’s Principia or any other book that refers to anything remotely like it. I certainly can’t do the phenomenon justice, not being a poet, but if you’ll forgive a poor attempt, I’d say it’s as though this man here is the hinge around which the whole age is trying to turn.”
This time Beguchren lifted both eyebrows. Then, while everyone else, including Tan, stared at his tall friend who had come out with such astonishing statements, he gave the Arobern a significant look.
The Arobern said to Mienthe, “Three hours behind you, hah?” Then he turned to one of the guardsmen, the one who had escorted Mienthe and Tan through Ehre, and commanded, “Set a guard on the iron gates. At once, do you hear? I wish to see anyone who comes through those gates. I wish to see these travelers personally, you understand, whoever they might be. And set a stronger guard on all the gates into Ehre—be quick to do that. Anyone who seems perhaps a little out of the ordinary, you understand? Men who are neither merchants nor farmers nor of any trade you can name. Look at these people for me, and send me word if you have any doubt what you have caught in your net.”
The guardsman bowed without a word and went out quickly.
The Arobern got to his feet. Mienthe jumped up immediately, not to stay seated while the king stood, and looked anxiously at Tan. Practiced as he was at showing only what he wished to show, he looked faintly stunned. Mienthe thought his expression was sincere. She certainly thought he had every reason to look stunned.
To Mienthe, the king said, “Honored lady, I will ask Lady Tehre Amnachudran Tanshan to grant you the hospitality of her household, if this is agreeable to you and if Lady Tehre will permit me the liberty.”
The tiny woman had been staring, with everyone else, at Tan. Now she transferred her interested gaze from Tan to Mienthe and said, in nearly accentless Terheien, “Yes, I am pleased to make such an offer. That will do very well.” She smiled, a sharp expression but not unkind, and added, directly to Mienthe, “I’m sure you wish to wash and shift your clothing. If I haven’t anything to suit you, I’ve got some cloth we can easily run up into a nice gown—I’ve been considering cloth lately. Working with cloth is more complicated and interesting than you’d think. Of course everything is fine if you apply any tension straight along the threads, and cloth distorts symmetrically if you apply tension at forty-five degrees to the angle of the warp and weft threads, but what I can’t make out is the equations that allow you to predict the degree and kind of deformation if the tension is applied at some intermediate angle—”