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  Elosa uttered something very like a scream.

  NailBiter had decided it was cawking time.

  Lady Elosa's magnificent silver had agreed.

  The two were side by side, with a futile length of chain dangling from NailBiter's ankle. His comb was fiery and thrashing with excitement, his plumage blown up until he looked twice as large as normal. Holding his kill with one foot, he had ripped off a leg and was offering it, and at the exact moment Shadow noticed what was happening, the silver accepted. NailBiter seemed to swell even more; he tore off the head and offered that. And that was accepted also.

  "Stop them!" Elosa wailed.

  "Ha!" Shadow said ruefully. "You stop them, lady! It's too late. Much too late."

  "IceFire! She's priceless! And a bronze! Father will kill me!"

  Eagles mated for life, and those two had just signed the contract.

  "Do something!" Elosa demanded, stamping her foot in frustration.

  "There's nothing we can do," Shadow said. "Except decide what to call their firstborn--IcyFingers, perhaps? Or Hotfoot?"

  The groom guffawed, and Lady Elosa switched from woe back to fury.

  Shadow walked over to the courting couple; they were much too intent on each other to be a threat to him. He checked to make sure that his bird had not injured his leg, and he removed the useless leash--the ancient staple had come out of the wall. NailBiter offered a tasty beakful of offal; IceFire gulped it and nibbled playfully at his comb.

  Shadow refastened NailBiter. The bird needed no special liberty for his wooing, for it would be a long time in human terms before the two got around to consummating their union. Then he slipped back through the bars as more birds came soaring in.

  Lady Elosa was still raging. "Careless oaf! Why did you not check that staple when you tethered your bird?"

  "Did you check yours?" Shadow asked, tiring of this tantrum thrower.

  She gasped. "Insolence! My father will have you flogged!"

  Shadow was not afraid of the duke, but the king was another matter. "Will he so? But it is your father's responsibility to maintain this aerie. NailBiter belongs to His Majesty, who has breeding plans for all his birds. He will certainly judge the case himself. Perhaps he will have your father flogged."

  She was too outraged to reply.

  More birds arrived, carrying a couple of troopers and the countess, Lord Ninomar, and the lithesome lass who professed to be his wife. Those two had both caught goats. Where was Vindax? The aerie was filled with laughter and the clattering of shackle chains.

  The groom was openly grinning now--with Vindax's grin. "My lord?" he asked diffidently. "That was a magnificent kill you made, if I may say so." He had Vindax's charm, also.

  "I'm not a lord," Shadow said. "And you certainly may say so." He smiled. "I didn't see it myself--I had my eyes shut."

  The kid looked at him carefully, wondering if he was serious. "Would you mind explaining how you did it, sir? How can you control a bird at that speed?"

  "I don't try to," Shadow said. "His reflexes are so much faster than mine that it would be stupid, like fighting with the flat of an ax instead of the edge. That's my opinion, anyway. We saw you try and fail, and the prince asked if I could do it. Well, I could barely see the cliff from that height, but NailBiter obviously thought he could make the strike. So I gave him the signal and let him try."

  NailBiter had dropped like a house.

  Elosa frowned. "Father says that an eagle carrying a man is very different from an unloaded one. If you don't keep control in the heat of the chase, then its instincts will fly you both into the ground."

  Ninomar and the others had started to approach and then stopped to stare in astonishment at Rorin.

  Shadow shrugged. "I'm sure your father is very knowledgeable, lady, and I admit that most trainers follow him. But some don't! After all, NailBiter has never flown without a burden. Even on his first glide, I suppose he bore a pack. So I have always just made sure that I chose the prey and the locale, and then let him teach himself to hunt. He hasn't gone after moles yet." But he had almost turned his rider's hair white a few times. "Perhaps you or your groom can answer a question for me, though."

  "What?" Elosa demanded.

  He nodded to the cawking pair. "How do eagles tell unpaired females? Could NailBiter have known? Did he do what he did just to impress your IceFire?" They had been very high, and it seemed incredible that even eagles could have eyesight that good. And how much risk had NailBiter taken?

  Before he was answered, Ninomar and the countess came over. The prince's WindStriker landed at last, and three others. The troopers were removing saddles and helmets.

  "Lovely kill, Shadow!" Ninomar said.

  "Thank you, Vice-Marshal," Shadow said. "Countess, may I have the honor of presenting..." He was unpracticed at formal introductions but eager to unload this minx. The countess took charge. Rorin stepped back, noticing now how he was being studied, uneasy at the untoward attention. More birds came in to perch.

  Then, at last, Vindax. "Beautiful kill, Shadow."

  "Thank you, Prince." Shadow moved into place behind him as the countess began her introduction.

  "Your Highness, may I--"

  "Bastard!" Lady Elosa screamed, and fainted.

  "It isn't possible!" Vindax said for the fourth time.

  The floor below the aerie was divided along three sides into stalls for humans, primitive stone boxes, most containing only a leaf-filled mattress. Someone had attempted to furnish one in a style more fitting for royalty, with a bed, a small rug, and drapes on door and window. And even that was remarkable, thought Shadow, when all of it had probably been flown in on birds' backs over the wild and barren landscape. Now the prince was slouched on the bed, glaring furiously, and Shadow leaned patiently by the doorway.

  They had put the hysterical Elosa in the care of the women. They had interviewed the terror-stricken groom and sent him off under guard. Now they were trying to make sense of it all.

  Tuy Rorin had admitted to being the keeper's bastard and to looking very like him. He had gone so far as to give an opinion that the prince was even more like him. Elosa's shock was now explained--but how to explain the explanation?

  Laughter drifted in from the stairwell. The courtly gentlefolk of the royal party had scorned the little castles and towns they had met at the beginning of the trip; they had complained and grumbled. As the habitations had grown more humble and conditions worse, the complaints had increased. The first of the lonely and primitive post aeries had shocked the courtiers speechless, but thereafter their attitude had changed. They saw themselves then as heroes, pioneers. The journey would not last forever, and they could dine out at court on the strength of their stories; they would be experts in hardship, seasoned campaigners. Now they seemed almost to relish the worst, greeting each new privation with black humor and joyful predictions of even bleaker things in store.

  "It is just not possible!" That was the fifth time.

  Then Vindax looked up at Shadow. "My parents were married on the kiloday of Father's accession, of that I am certain. I was born on 1374. The siege of Allaban was somewhere around 750 or 760..."

  "745 was the day Foan reached the palace," Shadow said. "I heard Ninomar saying so when we were talking about it in Gorr."

  "So they got back to Ninar Foan around 765 or thereabouts? It doesn't matter..." Vindax was very pale, a gleam of sweat on his forehead. This was no ordinary paternity problem they were discussing--this was the succession. "I'm sure Mother has told me that she stayed about a hectoday there, so say 865 was when she and the others set out for Ramo. Foan went with them for a very short way..."

  "That's still five hectodays before I was born!" he shouted.

  Shadow put a finger to his lips. "He has never been to court?"

  Vindax dropped his voice. "Never! I asked why, of course. All I was told was that his post was here, defending the frontier." He frowned. "It is odd, isn't it? The frontier's been quiet ever
since--Karaman has never tried to attack Ninar Foan. You'd think the premier noble of the realm would have visited the court at least once in...in my lifetime."

  His distress was painful, and Shadow wished he could think of some comfort to offer. "Isn't Foan a relative, a distant one?"

  Vindax shrugged. "Just about every peer in the kingdom has some royal blood in him." He pondered for a moment. "He's the great-great-grandson of Jarkadon IX, my great-great-great-grandfather. That makes us third cousins, once removed."

  He went back to glowering at the floor. Shadow wondered why he had been chosen as confidant in this crisis; he felt both flattered and worried by the honor. "How about the royal portrait gallery?" he asked.

  There he scratched gold--Vindax brightened. "By God, Shadow! This beak of mine--it shows up in some, but a long way back. Before Jarkadon IX, anyway. So, if it's the sort of thing that jumps generations..." Then his black mood returned, and he brooded for a while. "You ever heard of fair-haired parents having dark-haired children?" he asked.

  "Yes," Shadow said, "but it always causes gossip."

  "Gossip!" The prince lowered his voice to a whisper. "It isn't gossip that bothers me, Shadow. It isn't illegitimacy. It isn't Jarkadon IX. It's Jarkadon X."

  Shadow knew of no Jarkadon X, so he raised an eyebrow, and Vindax nodded. "He's an ambitious bast--he's not notably scrupulous. If he thought he could make a case, he's quite capable of starting a civil war."

  But who was the legitimate heir?

  Shadow decided to take some risks. "Prince, I think you're overreacting...and being very unfair to your mother. And your father. They wouldn't have concealed...I mean your mother wouldn't have..."

  He dried up and got a mocking smile. "Hard to put into words, isn't it?" Vindax said. "Why did they never summon Foan to court? Why was my mother so frantically against my making this journey? She raised every objection she could think of, even bad dreams. She's been failing ever since I suggested it--I thought she had some serious disease. I wanted to get the trip over with and get back as soon as possible. Now I think it was the thought of the trip doing it to her. You realize that until now almost no one else in the kingdom has met both him and me?"

  "What did your father think of the idea?"

  "He never met him," Vindax said grimly. Then he laughed harshly. "I was told to invite him to court! He'll be a sensation!"

  Boots stamped outside, and Shadow reached over to lift the drape, unveiling Vice-Marshal Ninomar, soldierly, precise, and utterly brainless.

  "Yes?" the prince said wearily.

  "The men have been unable to locate any fuel, Your Highness," his lordship said. "We have virtually no provisions except raw goat meat. I wondered if you still wish to remain here over third watch or press on to Ninar Foan?"

  He did not say that the countryside was barren for hours in all directions, that he had been against stopping at Vinok at all, that he had recommended bringing spares which could have carried supplies--food, perhaps, but hardly firewood, thought Shadow--or that the aerie might have been properly prepared for the royal visit had Shadow not tampered with the schedule.

  Vindax sighed at this petty interruption and looked to Shadow--he seemed to be doing that more and more.

  "There are spare mattresses," Shadow said. "Dry mute pellets burn very well, and I believe that the roof is made of timber."

  He dropped the curtain without another word and was pleased to see a smile on Vindax's face.

  "How do you do that?" the prince demanded. "The trooper found no fuel. So he reported to the trooper who was going to do the cooking, I suppose, and he told the ensign and he told the colonel...it works its way up through six or seven men until it reaches the heir to the throne. Then you solve it with a snap of your fingers! How?"

  It was not a subject Shadow would have chosen, but anything was better than letting Vindax brood on his own paternity.

  "From my father, I think," he said. "The Guard doesn't teach men to do thing; it teaches themhowto do things. You build a fire with kindling and logs. No logs, no fire."

  "So?" the prince asked, puzzled.

  Shadow smiled. "The locusts eat my father's crops, one corner of the Keep is subsiding, the wilds and the Guard steal the livestock, the neighbors deepen their well and his dries up, the serfs don't work if they're not watched, and the royal tax collectors demand more than he's got. But if he doesn't solve those problems, his serfs will starve, and he feels responsible. So he finds another way. No one tells himhow."

  Vindax nodded. "Practical! That's the sort of thinking I want in my staff, Shadow. I want to meet your father. When we get back--"

  The drape rustled aside to admit the countess.

  The countess of Dumarr was not a person, she was an office. Appointments to that office were neither gazetted nor bestowed at dubbing, although they might as well have been from the speed at which they were known around the court. The countess of Dumarr was the crown prince's current mistress, a position of some importance in palace politics. The present incumbent was a sweet little cuddly blonde with a heart of steel and a very practical attitude to her work--Shadow approved of her. Normally there was no count of Dumarr, but the chief of protocol had been told to use that name for the duration of the trip. Some of the country gentry may even have believed that he was her husband.

  She slipped by Shadow, sat down next to the prince, and looked him over appraisingly. Then she cuddled, getting little response.

  "It's more complicated than we thought," she said.

  "I thought it would be," Vindax said sadly.

  "She's a woolly-headed spoiled brat, full of romantic notions and her own importance, but I don't think this jaunt was truly her idea. She was put up to it by her mother and someone called Ukarres, an uncle." The countess glanced up to include Shadow in the conversation, then back to Vindax. "She was led to believe that her father was coming here--to warn about a plot on your life."

  Shadow stiffened.

  "Her father knows this?" the prince asked.

  "I would guess not," the countess said. "He can certainly deny it. She didn't want to be cheated out of meeting her dream prince, so she came herself."

  Vindax frowned and looked to Shadow.

  "Then her father will be coming also?" Shadow asked.

  The countess shrugged. "She told them she was going off in the opposite direction, so he will probably be starting a search for her about now."

  "Considerate little bitch!" the prince muttered.

  The countess nuzzled the side of his neck.

  "Was she told to bring that Rorin kid with her?" Shadow asked.

  The countess was smart enough to have seen that point. "No. That seems to have been chance."

  "Why does that matter?" Vindax asked sharply.

  "Because that chance sort of scrambled the egg," Shadow said. "Without him along, this would have come out in private, even if she did faint at the sight of you."

  But the egg had been scrambled--the whole royal party knew now. Vindax could turn tail and run back to Ramo, but the court would still hear how he looked so much like the duke of Foan's groom.

  "Should I see her?" Vindax asked.

  The countess shook her head. "Not yet. She's still in deep shock. She equates you with Rorin."

  "Thanks."

  She kissed his ear. "Silly! I mean that ever since childhood she has been dreaming of marrying the crown prince--and now she's discovered that he looks like her half-brother."

  Vindax drew back his teeth in a snarl and looked up at Shadow.

  "You will have to marry her now, you know," the countess said cheerfully. "It will be the only way to squash the rumors."

  "Think of the wedding," Vindax snapped, "and the jokes about the father of the happy couple. I suppose you will now forbid me to visit Ninar Foan?" he demanded of Shadow.

  "Who's behind the plot?" Shadow asked, needing time to think. "The rebels? Karaman?"

  The countess said that neither Elosa nor her mother
knew.

  "Oh--hell!" Vindax said. He went paler than ever. "The duchess of Foan did visit the court once. I remember her being presented. I must have been about four." He stared in horror at the countess and then at Shadow. "So there my be no assassination plot at all--just a plot to keep me away from the keeper. Perhaps the duchess of Foan has been playing the same game as my mother?"

  And that nasty question raised even more nasty questions.

  "You could send for the duke," the countess suggested.

  "Shadow? Advise me, dammit! What do we do?"

  Shadow shrugged. He was not sure who was playing what games, for he knew he could never understand these prickly aristocrats with their convoluted principles of honor. Security, however, he thought he could handle, and unless someone launched an open assault, the lonely aerie was safer than anywhere. "We send Rorin back to explain that the girl is safe. We'll send one of our people along." Not a trooper, he decided. They had better keep the armed strength up. "The chief of protocol, perhaps? Have him ask the duke for reassurance--he'll probably come himself. Meanwhile you stay here. You can't avoid the scandal now. The damage is done."

  Vindax nodded. His arm had gone around the countess, apparently of its own volition. He smiled at her, and she wiggled her tongue at him. He looked up and dismissed Shadow with a nod. "See to it!"

  Shadow slipped out and closed the drape carefully, knowing that he was leaving the prince in good hands.

  Chapter 5

  "...even nestlings are dangerous."

  --Manual of Training, Royal Guard

  IT was his birthday. He was sixteen kilodays old today, and no one in the world knew it. Probably no one knew his name, either; he often wondered if even the king remembered. For almost five of those kilodays he had been Shadow, and his real name had not been spoken in all that time. He had probably established a record, for it was very unlikely that any previous King Shadow had lasted five kilodays, certainly not in recent reigns.

  He was standing in the royal cabinet, staring out a window and brooding on being old: sixteen.