Arian reached out and touched his shoulder. “Kieri—the rest of it—” She told what she now knew about her father, little as it was. “Amrothlin says your mother tried to pass the elvenhome gift to you; I believe that even if she did so, my father’s choice to mate with human women had no such intent. I cannot imagine he was his father’s heir; he simply wanted to prevent the Lady’s use of him to engender a child to whom she could transfer it.”

“But you don’t know for certain she could have done so.”

“No. And nor do you, though I think in your case—despite Amrothlin’s belief—your mother might have succeeded. If you could create an elvenhome, then the elves would feel more at home here.”

“I’m not an immortal,” Kieri said. “After I die, it would disappear again.”

“Not if you could pass on the gift to a child—and that child to another.”

“If I have the talent … which I don’t know and have no idea how to use…” He stood and moved around the room. “Another puzzle. Every time we drag an answer out of them, it leads to more questions. I would like just one thing I’m supposed to do to be straightforward and obvious.”

“I can think of something,” Arian said, chuckling.

“What—oh. That.”

She laughed aloud. “Your duty, sir king. Straightforward, obvious, and easily attained. Shall we begin?”

CHAPTER SIX

Vérella

Prince Camwyn Mahieran had witnessed the expulsion of his cousin Beclan from the Mahieran family; his brother, King Mikeli, had explained all the reasons that lay behind that ruling, and he understood them—intellectually. Imaginatively, he felt unexpected sympathy for Beclan, whom he’d never really liked. How could Beclan be a Verrakaien now? Families were families: related by blood. If blood meant anything, how could someone be alienated from that relationship? He posed the question once to the Marshal-Judicar during a lesson on Girdish law, and the look he received from those frosty gray eyes stopped the rest of his protest in his throat. The Marshal-Judicar recited the relevant law and its reasoning, a process that at least relieved Camwyn of the need to discuss the day’s assignment, involving the kingdom’s economic base in relation to Gird’s beliefs about earned and unearned income. Camwyn knew that the royal household was not thought to earn its income, though with Mikeli spending most of every day on the realm’s business, why not?

He nodded at the end of the lesson and escaped with relief to a session with the royal armsmaster. He was finally learning to use a real sword—real, that is, in being a longsword almost as long as his brother’s. He had grown much taller in the past year—an earlier growth spurt than Mikeli’s—and he lacked but a few fingerwidths of his brother’s height.