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Haguefort, the rosy-stoned castle that was his ancestral home. His sixteen years had been marked by loss, first of his mother, then his father, and scarred by near-loss as well, so whenever the doors closed on the place where critical discussions were undertaken and decisions of great import were made, leaving him out in the corridor, it made him anxious.
    He was particularly nervous now, given that his guardians, the Lord and Lady Cymrian, had gone to great lengths to include him in virtually every decision of state that had been made since his father’s death three years prior. That they had politely requested he remain outside during their discussions was upsetting, though he told himself there was no reason for it to be. He trusted both his godfather and his godfather’s wife, the woman who had adopted him as an honorary grandchild, implicitly. Somehow, despite that trust, his nerves were on edge this morning.
    His anxiety deepened into genuine dismay as one by one his guardians’ most trusted advisors began to arrive in the corridor outside the Great Hall. Each was announced, and quickly admitted, while Gwydion continued to cool his heels on the thick carpet of woven silk.
    Finally, when a familiar advisor entered the corridor, Gwydion intervened. That he chose to approach Anborn, the great Lord Marshal and General during the Cymrian War, was less because the man had been a mentor of sorts to him than because the Cymrian hero was lame. Anborn had to be carried in on a litter, there had been a delay in his announcement, and so Gwydion seized the opportunity to speak to him before he entered the Hall.
    â€œLord Marshal! What is going on in there?” he asked, coming alongside the litter and interposing his body between it and the doorway.
    Anborn signaled to the soldiers who bore the litter to set him down andstep away. His azure eyes, blue in the color of the Cymrian dynastic line, blazed beneath his wrinkled brow in a mixture of annoyance, amusement, and fondness.
    â€œHow would I know, you young fool? I haven’t even made it past the door, thanks to you. Move aside, and then perhaps I will have an idea.”
    â€œWill you come back out once you do know and tell me, then?” Gwydion pressed. “If Rhapsody and Ashe have invited you to confer, the subject must be of great importance.”
    The general shook his mane of dark hair streaked with the silver of age and snorted.
    â€œCertainly, though I doubt I am going to stay for much of the discussion. Where you attend a trade apprenticeship is of little interest to me.”
    Gwydion’s face contorted in shock as the icy horror took hold of his viscera.
    â€œA trade apprenticeship? They are sending me away to be apprenticed? Please say it isn’t so.”
    The general signaled to his litter bearers. “All right, then. It isn’t so. Now move out of the way, cur, and let me get this cursed conference over with so that I might get back to more useful pursuits—training my men, cleaning my boots, picking my nostrils, moving my bowels—anything other than this folderol.”
    â€œApprenticed?”
    â€œOh, for goodness’ sake, buck up, boy,” the General said as the soldiers lifted his litter. “Going away to continue your education is a necessary part of your training to be duke one day. Your own father was apprenticed to any number of different masters in his youth. You will survive and be better for it.” The doors opened; the General’s litter was carried into the Hall, and the doors shut decisively behind him.
    Gwydion sank onto a bench of carved mahogany and groaned.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    He looked up to see Melisande, his nine-year-old sister, watching him, concern in her dark eyes. Gwydion smiled quickly.
    â€œPerhaps nothing, Melly,” he said reassuringly. Melisande had suffered many of the same tragedies he had suffered, but she was much younger. It had been an