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
