“Your letter,” he said, fumbling at his belt pouch. “I must return it—they took it, but I recovered it after I escaped.”

“What about your gnomish friend?”

“He is with Count Arcolin … Marshal-General, the story is long and you are in a hurry. And I have a word from Marshal Porfur of Ifoss Grange as well. But we can wait.”

“Helfran—” The Marshal-General waved to a yeoman. “See these guests have a place for their mounts and refreshment. I will see them later.”

“This way,” Helfran said. He led them into the stables to untack and loose the horses into a small paddock obviously made from dividing a larger one into three with a temporary fence. He brought buckets of water for the barrel. “We’re full up, you see,” he said. “No guest rooms in the schools, either. We’ve had more traffic this summer than two seasons past. Marshal-General would’ve told you, but she’s already late for that meeting and she hates late. First it was magery, and then that elf showed up again in the High Lord’s Hall and she had to talk to him…”

“What elf?”

“I don’t rightly know. Just some elf in fancy clothes like they wear and a crown sort of thing on his head—”

“Not the Lady of the Ladysforest, then—”

“Oh, she’s dead. Died in the spring; didn’t you know?”

“I’ve been in Aarenis.” It would not do to show his surprise. Magery? Elf from somewhere other than the Ladysforest? The Lady dead? “I thought elves were immortal,” he said. Everyone knew elves were immortal.

“Killed by kuaknom—the tree-haters, that turned evil after the Severance.” Helfran twitched his shoulders and changed the subject. “You can leave your packs in the main court until you find a room somewhere, if you want. The inns aren’t all full, just us up here, mostly. There’s a nice little inn, my brother’s sister-in-law runs it, just a few minutes down on your right, across from a grange, and I know they’ve got room because I ate breakfast there this morning. Why doesn’t she send some of ’em down here? Pia asked me, meaning the Marshal-General, and I couldn’t say except all them Marshals hang together like grapes on a stalk.”

The hint could not have been stronger if he’d outlined it in red paint. But if there was no room here, he and the boy did need a place to sleep. “How long do you think the Marshal-General’s meeting will take?”

“More’n half the afternoon, most like. Near suppertime. There’s all them Marshals in for the meeting they hold every three years … lots of meetings, that is, really. Council on changing the Code’s been at it since spring.”

“Then we’ll go find a room,” Arvid said.