The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(16)

“You need to learn a trade,” Marcus said to Lleu solemnly, and Goewin and Gofan laughed.

Lleu said with cold dignity, “I am learning to use a sword.”

“That’s right,” Gofan said in his deep voice, a gentle counter to the well-intentioned insolence of his pupil. “You need to be skilled in what’s expected of you. How old are you—fifteen? If you were not the high king’s son you would be apprenticed by now, or starting to be. But you aren’t expected to learn a craft beyond the soldiery and husbandry you are already being taught. Your art and skill must lie in leadership.”

Goewin said, straightfaced, “But is leadership something that can be taught ?”

“I’ll always have people like you about to make sure what I want will be done,” Lleu said comfortably.

The iron under my hands steadied me; minutes ago it had been crimson with heat, molten, but was no longer.

“I won’t pave your floors,” Marcus said.

“Oh many thanks, my loyal servant,” Lleu said, folding his arms. “I wouldn’t ask it of you.”

“This gate we are making is no more necessary and serves no greater purpose than the mosaic he has been mending,” Gofan corrected his apprentice. “I am doing this because I enjoy the work; and Medraut enjoys watching us, and when the gate is finished others will enjoy seeing it and using it. Someone put as much pride and thought into the villa’s tiled floor, and Lleu is doing an honorable thing in preserving that creation.”

As though he felt it was his duty to undercut his master’s point, Marcus said, “Do you know what is happening in the lower mines right now?”

I looked up from the smooth metal.

“What is happening?” Goewin asked.

Marcus, having introduced the subject, apparently felt he had said as much as was required of him. After he had rested in self-satisfied silence for a moment or two, I explained, “There’s been so much rain that the lowest level is flooded. The bedrock stops the water from sinking into the ground, and we have to keep emptying water out.”

Lleu began, “I could be—”

“You couldn’t be,” Goewin told him. “You could never be a miner—no more than you could be a plowman or a weaver.”

“What can I be?”

All arrogance crushed, Lleu slid from the sill where he was sitting and stepped into the muddy, sunlit yard to look at the sky. I followed him and stood next to him, looking not at the sky but at the bare red Edge and the black leafless trees that lined it. “Medraut, you belong here,” Lleu said.

Imagine my surprise. I answered gently, “You were born here.”

“But I don’t belong. Even if I owned it all—you know your way through the mines, over the moors. How? I barely know my w Celyx20ay across the Edge.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You are learning. You recognize the malachite we mine for copper, and you know we use it to make bronze; you use it in the mosaics in another way.”

Lleu considered the low, quick-scudding clouds, listening but apparently nonchalant. “I wish I had made those mosaics,” he said. “I know they aren’t perfect; you can see the mistakes, the wrong colors in places, uneven lines in the borders. But who does such work anymore, now that the Romans are gone? I wish I could see the pattern books they used. And the work of other artists, and other kinds of artistry. I wish I had seen the paintings that were on the walls before Father rebuilt the house.”

I was both amused and curiously saddened by his outburst. “You will have to travel,” I said lightly. “In Byzantium there are mosaics and frescoes to fill your thirsty heart brim full. Today content yourself with Gofan’s iron gates.”

“I would, but Marcus makes me feel an idiot. ‘You need to learn a trade’!” he mimicked with some fire.

I laughed. “You are neither an engineer nor a warrior like your father, but you have your own artistry. In time you’ll dance circles around an argument, just as now you turn aside your opponent’s blade.”

He did not answer, but he thought on it. Then he turned and went back inside. I stood alone in the dooryard, half smiling to think how absurd this was, that I should be working to convince Lleu of his worth.

So the year was gone. In the spring Artos made Lleu the heir to his kingdom, naming him prince of Britain. In a year Lleu had changed from a weakling child to a matchless swordsman, the moth hatched from the worm at last; I must be dull in his shadow, shotten, mean. I had come here sick with the power I had known in the Orcades as your counselor and aide and executioner, and I ought now to be content with my newfound quiet authority. Lleu’s own triumph should not matter. But it did matter. Standing in the Lesser Hall among the high king’s Comrades with Goewin at my side, waiting at first light in tense silence for the meeting to begin—it mattered; though outwardly I was all serene control, shut and screened behind my eyes. And Goewin shored me. She and Ginevra were the only women present, but since Ginevra stood at her husband’s side as his queen, Goewin was alone. She seemed shorter than she was, dwarfed by Caius the steward at her right hand. Nothing softened her hard expression.