"It will be well," Emmeline soothed from beside her.

Selida did not hear her close the distance between them. She tried to speak but could not.

Young Lydris's face appeared in the door to the great hall, outpacing Old Meg by half the length of the keep.

"Mother!" he called. "Is there to be a sortie?"

Emmeline straightened. "Stay your enthusiasm." Her voice rang with absolute, loving firmness. Lydris froze like a puppy arrested by the collar. Emmeline nodded to acknowledge the watching refugees, and then took Selida's elbow. "Come. Let us give Old Meg a much needed rest, and return to the solar."

Selida hesitated.

In the stables, Kahldar addressed Ser Aegison: some matter involving formations and armored barding.

Emmeline lowered her voice. "He is a Welded knight, following his commanders orders. Not even were you his cleric could you countermand that." She tugged gently on Selida's arm. "You may give Lydris a lesson, if you prefer it to embroidery. It will keep you both safely occupied."

Selida felt numb all over. "You could countermand them."

"My dear, that is not my place."

She barely registered that Emmeline had turned their steps towards the apartments.

"Are you not their liege?"

"My Lydris taught me long ago that once you have appointed your stewards, you must allow them to make their own decisions."

Young Lydris joined them then, bouncing first on one foot, then the other. "Mother, I'm sorry. I saw them from the window and forgot to keep my voice level."

"It's alright, my love. Why don't you precede us upstairs, and pull out your holy figures? Lady Selida has promised to tell us stories of the Tidemother this afternoon."

Selida pulled against Emmeline's arm. "This is not just about Ser Kahldar. Are you willing to consign your son's fate to this questionable decision? The fate of the Tidelands?"

Emmeline shook her head and pressed onward. "Do I choose to trust an earnest man devoted to my family? I do every day, just as I trust an earnest woman based on the strength of our friendship." Emmeline paused at the open kitchen door. After a few words, the staff sprang to prepare parcels of bread and dried meat for the defenders. Then she glided on to the laundry, to instruct the maids to prepare fresh bandages and towels.
Selida waited until they were once again ascending the spiral stairwell. "This is different. This moment may change everything."

Emmeline smiled down at the hem of her dress. "You have seen quite a lot of people, riding up and down the coast. But what you have witnessed is a series of moments, each standing alone: weddings, births, funerals. When you live in one place as I do, you see that it is not only the days you expect to change your life which have the power to do so. My Lydris perished in a hunting accident. There was great significance to his decision to ride out that day, but how could we have known? He had been hunting for years. That morning, the question of whether or not to go barely registered as a thought." Easing open the solar door, she gestured Selida inside.

Selida balked. "Emmeline, the trust you extend to Ser Aegison is different from that which your husband granted him. Lord Magnus was party to his decisions in a way you actively evade. If he were here today, his opinion alone may have persuaded Ser Aegison not to go. And if not, the thread of his countermand might have."

"But would he have countermanded him?" Emmeline settled into her bench beside the window. "I knew him best in all the world, and I truly cannot say."

Selida stared at Emmeline's tranquil profile and felt the floor of the keep tilt under her.

Tidemother, all I wanted was to free us both of obligation or expectation.

Aluna's chair was empty, so it was the Grand Cleric's tart voice she heard instead. And he understood you, well enough didn't he?

Selida felt something crumple in her chest.

This is my fault.
This is my fault, and if I do not learn to live with it, how will I manage any of the rest that is yet to come?

***

No governess had ever cajoled Selida into learning embroidery, so she sat on the rug with Lydris. From a painted box, he withdrew a collection of carved figures: knights on horses, Dawnland ladies, Tidelander fishermen. Pirates and boats followed, and then farmers and wagons and pairs of clever animals. And of course, the statue of Aluna herself, twice as tall as a human, standing barefoot on a bed of coiling serpents.

All the while, Selida followed the progress of the sortie with her ears. Men and horses gathered in the courtyard. The portcullis and drawbridge opened. A clatter of noise, and then an aching silence.

Lydris, also listening, arrayed the wooden creatures in facing rows.

"Have Lady Selida tell you the story of Aluna and the fisherman," Emmeline instructed. And then: "Your figurines are for holy instruction, not playing battlefield."

Lydris looked guiltily up at Selida.

"I suspect that Aluna does not mind that we play at war, so long as we also remember how to play for peace," Selida said. "Come, hand me the fox and the mermaid and the knight and I will tell you how Aluna brokered peace between the people of the sea and the people of the land."

"The fox?" Emmeline's lips pursed.

"A clever creature, capable of mediation," Selida said.

"May I be the knight?" the boy asked.

Selida carefully did not think about Kahldar, clad in full plate, astride Ispen, cantering towards the woods. "Certainly." She handed him back the figure. "Tell me his name, and we can begin."

***

Outside the lattice of her preaching, the silence stretched on. The air outside the keep thickened. As Selida wound her way through one story, and a second, and a third, she marked the time in her head. Just now, the horses would be at the base of the hill. Now, leaving the road to cut across the scrub to the clearing.

An hour passed. And then another.

Lydris bounced to his feet. "May I go find the pages for practice? We did shields yesterday and Ser Kahldar said my form was excellent."

"I'm afraid you must stay here today," Emmeline said. "Ser Aegison and Ser Kahldar are both abroad; the Lady Cleric and I need you to attend us."

"Are they fighting yet?"

Selida imagined it: the clearing, the sappers. The counterattack.

"They will tell you the tale when they return."

"I wish I could have gone with them. They took Aaron and Marshall."

"Aaron and Marshall are both squires."

Young squires, Selida remembered. Aaron played the harp. Marshall's mother and sisters huddled in the keep below. Aluna save them. The Fox would take hostages for ransom, would he not? A mounted knight in full armor was worth at least a town's harvest. Surely he had not fallen so deep into either resentment or piracy that he had forgotten the basics of chivalric exchange.

Lydris beseeched Selida with his eyes. "What do you think is happening? Is Ser Aegison on the front line? Has he kept his force together, or divided it in two?"

"Two, I hope."

He pounced. "Why? Is that strategically better?"

"Why don't you patrol across the doorway," Emmeline suggested. "This conversation would be much better held with your Knight Commander."

"May I at least patrol the corridor?"

"Go no further than the stairs."

It was all Selida could do to remain behind in the room. She rose to her feet and began sorting Emmeline's embroidery floss.

"Don't fidget," Emmeline murmured into her stitches. "Expressing tranquility is as much an act of faith as a blessing."

"I will organize a prayer service for tonight," Selida decided, still on her feet. "I'm sure the refugees worry over the departure of half their guardsmen, and want something to occupy their minds."

"You will do no such thing. The keep will remain in readiness for the moment the men return. Sit and pray for them, if you please."

Selida sat. Outside the window, the invisible sun sank behind the wall of clouds piled atop the ocean. She could hear the remaining guardsmen exchanging uneasy conversation as they changed shifts.

"I should be in the kitchen, helping to prepare dinner."

Emmeline smiled at her. "I remember your father, complaining to mine, that you had worn out three nursemaids."

Selida glowered at her and began Aluna's Litany of Wisdom, out loud, and in Old Elven. With any luck, it would last them through dinner.