of the chair shift on the wooden floor. "Though mind you, anyone who falls asleep on guard-duty deserves to be stiff."
"Go sleep," Oreg said, and I heard from his tone that he was fond of her. "I told you I slept just across the hall, you didn't need to stay here."
"Yes, I did," she said, yawning. "He watched over me under similar circumstances."
He waited where he was until she'd shuffled out and the door shut behind her.
"All right, Ward," he said. "Time to wake up and face the day."
I took a deep breath and pulled the covers down. "Good morning," I said, trying to sound normal.
Oreg sat on the foot of the bed. "How did you sleep?"
I opened my mouth to lie and tell him I was well-rested when I remembered that at least one of the nightmares I'd had was important. "The Tamerlain was here - I don't know if I told you her part in all of this. Yesterday is a bit of a blur."
Oreg nodded. "You told all of us that she cleared your head so you could think and throw Jakoven's plans to the wolves. It was a near thing, though. I talked to the guardsman who was watching so he could summon your uncle's men if they were needed. Even as it was, he said that but for your uncle's hold on Tosten, he'd have gone for the king right there and then."
"Well," I said, not wanting to think how close I had come to getting my entire family beheaded for treason. "She visited me last night and told me that Aethervon had a gift of true dreaming for me - out of gratitude for cleansing the land, I think she said. I dreamt the king was looking for a boy, my father's son out of a Hurog-bred whore. The boy's mother is dead, but the boy would be Hurog-born from both parents."
"Can you find him?" Oreg asked.
I shook my head. "I just saw the king's part in this. I need to see the boy before I can find him with magic." An increasingly familiar feeling of weakness crept over me. "Ah, gods," I whispered before my body began to try to shake itself apart.
An extremely unpleasant interval followed. Oreg held me until it was over, then efficiently removed me to the chair, burned my clothes and the sheets, and cleaned the room. He stepped out and returned - in clean clothes, as I had managed to dirty him, too - with sheets and clothes for me. He made the bed as I dressed.
"Efficient," I said, sitting stiffly on the bed.
"You think you are the only Hurog whose body rebelled from the poisons pumped through it?" he said. "If I weren't efficient after all these years, it would be a shame. Most of them even chose to indulge in vice. Go to sleep, Ward. Duraugh has to write orders for Beckram to take to Iftahar's seneschal, so we're not leaving until later this morning. I'll have a talk with Tisala about your newest foundling. As it happens, she has a lot of contacts in Estian. If there's a young Hurog out in the streets, she'll find him."
He left and I lay back in the bed, feeling even worse than I had when I awoke. As I stared at the ceiling, Tosten opened the door, his battered lap harp in one hand.
He gave me a measuring glance. "You look worse than you did yesterday. Oreg told me you needed cheering up - and I was to come and make myself useful."
I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.
"I see he was right." Tosten nodded. "You need to hear The Ballad of Hurog's Dragon, which is even now making itself popular in the taverns of Estian."
He pulled up Tisala's chair, settled himself in it, and began to play a song that purported itself to be a story a Shavig armsman was telling to a Tallvenish audience at an inn. That it was one of Tosten's own compositions was obvious to me. I knew my brother's music.
About halfway through I surged to my feet in disbelief. "He did what?"
Tosten stopped playing. "Oreg was really worried about you, Ward. It wasn't his fault. None of the horses got hurt, and he did that thing that makes people look away from him. I bet there weren't half a dozen of the men who really got a good look at him."
"And you're singing about this in the taverns? No