“And I treated you well when no one else would.” Briony was trying slowly to tilt her balance so that she could kick Dawet hard in the leg, hoping it would hurt him enough that she could jerk free from his grasp and draw her own blade. She would rather have kicked him higher—Shaso had been most thorough in teaching her the best places to strike in close combat—but neither her angle nor her petticoats would permit it.
“Which matters not, my lady. I am trying to make a point, here.” He leaned close, so that the thin blade of his knife was as near his face as hers. “You mistake men for moral creatures, as if each must measure up the good and bad done to him and then act accordingly, as though they were incorruptible judges weighing out a sentence.”
Briony did her best not to tense. “Oh, I know men are corruptible… and corrupted… never fear.”
She lashed out with her foot, hoping to surprise him. Instead, Dawet kept his hold on her wrists and hooked her leg with his, knocking her remaining foot from beneath her. Briony slid off the bench and would have fallen but Dawet held her up, so that she dangled between his hand and the bench like a deer carcass hung in front of a hunter’s lodge. Her shame and fury almost exceeded her fear. “Let me go!”
“As you wish, Lady.” He let go and she dropped the short distance to the ground.
Briony was up an instant later with her knife in her hand. “You! How dare you? How ...”
“How dare I what?” His expression was flat, almost cruel, which was just as well. If he had smiled at her she might have tried to kill him. “Show you what a fool you are being? You are a very clever girl, Briony Eddon, but you are still only that—a girl. A maiden, even, I do not doubt. Do you understand what you have risked of your own safety and your family’s fortunes coming here like this?”
The Yisti dagger wavered in her hand. “You… you do not mean to harm me?”
“By the Great Mother, Princess, do you think I am such a fool as to try to do injury to a white-skinned northern girl in a northern castle, within the hearing of a hundred armed guards or more, and not even put a hand over her mouth?” He shook his head. “Tell me I have not so far misestimated your intelligence, or you mine.”
“You had a knife to my throat!”
“If I truly meant you harm, I would have disarmed you.” He reached out, fast as Shaso himself had been, faster perhaps, and used his own blade to flip her dagger out of her hand. It spun into the darkness, disappearing into the shadowy garden border without a sound. “Now go find it. I will wait. That did not look the sort of knife anyone would like to lose.”
When she came back, she had hidden the Yisti dagger in her sleeve again. “If it weren’t for this wretched dress I would have had both knives out, and you would have had one of them in your shin, at the very least.”
He grinned, but there was no mirth in it. “Then let us both be glad you didn’t, for I feel pretty certain that things would not have gone so easily or happily as you suppose.”
“But why did you do that?” She sat down again, much more warily this time, but Dawet did not make any movement toward her. “You frightened me.”
“Good, my lady. That is the first thing I have heard since I met you here that makes me happy. I want you frightened. You are in terrible danger. Have you not realized that?”
She stared at him, doing her best to remember the lessons again, not of warcraft but of mummery. It would not do to let the tears well up. It would be altogether too… girlish. “Yes, Master dan-Faar, I have certainly realized that, most notably when someone tried to poison me three days gone, but I thank you for the reminder.”
“Your sarcasm serves you poorly, Princess. You should thank me in truth for being honest with you when others would not or cannot.” He reached out his hand and gently placed it on her arm. “In truth, I wish that were not my role. I would someone had given me a fairer, kinder part to play ...”
This time he did not anticipate her strike. She moved so quickly that the point of her blade pinked the fat of his hand before he could pull back. He stood up, anger clouding his face, and yanked off his glove to examine the wound. It was not, Briony thought, a very serious spite. “You little… ! Why did you do that?”
“You are the one who counseled mistrust, Master dan-Faar.” She was breathing hard and her heart was drumming. “You speak to me of how kind you are, how thoughtful, how you have my best interests in mind where no one else does. Very well. Start by answering this question, please—what are you? Are you an enemy with a soft spot toward me? Or a friend? Would you be my brother, or would you be a lover? I have spent my life at the center of public doings. I am not so flattered by your attention as to lose all sense of who I am and what I’m after, nor to forget that you seem to want to have things all ways at once.” She stared at him. “Well, sir, what would you be to me?”
For a moment Dawet simply stared at her over his hand as he sucked on the place where she had pinked him. “Princess, I do not know. In truth, I am not certain I know who you are anymore. Your time in exile has changed you.”
“Well, that should be no surprise, should it?” She once more tucked away her dagger. “If you decide you want to speak to me again—perhaps to give me some information I could truly use, like what you know of my father—you will know where to find me.”
“Wait.” Dawet lifted his hand to her as though conceding a wager. “Enough, Briony.”
“Princess Briony, Master dan-Faar. We do not know each other so well, nor have you proved your friendship yet.”
He drew back. “You are hard, Lady. Did I not warn you back in Southmarch that someone in your court meant you harm?”
“Come now. Without naming any names to me, what use was that? Of what ruler in all the world is that not true? You have not done me any unkindnesses, Envoy, but as far as I can see you have done me no services either, except to share the gift of your company.” She unbent enough to give him a half-smile. “A gift not without merit, but hardly the stuff of undying loyalty.”
He shook his head. “You have become a hard-shelled girl, Princess.”
“I have stayed a living woman when many wished it were otherwise. Now tell me of my father or let us say farewell and get out of this cold night.”
“There is nothing much to say. When I left Hierosol to come here he was still Ludis Drakava’s prisoner. Since then I have heard the same rumors as you—that Ludis has fled, that your father has been given to the autarch, that Hierosol will fall at any moment ...”
“What? Given to… to the autarch? I have never heard… oh, Merciful Zoria, say it is not true! What madness is this?”
“But… surely you have heard the tale. Many people here in Tessis are repeating it—Ludis traded him for his own escape, it’s said. But do not fear too much, lady, it is only rumor so far. Nothing is known for certain ...”
She hissed her anger. “Blood of the Brothers! Not one of these cursed Syannese has spoken a word of it to me!” She reached out and plucked a blossom from the branch near her head and held it for a moment. No tears, she reminded herself. She crushed it in her fingers and let the petals fall. “Tell me everything you have heard.” The tears had ebbed without ever reaching her eyes. She felt a cold hardness in her breast, as though ice grew on her heart.
“As I said, Lady, these are only tales, much confused and…”
“Do not soothe me, dan-Faar. I am no longer a child. Just… inform me.” She took a breath. The night seemed to bend close; the chilly darkness inside her rose to greet it. “I may have lost my family’s throne but I will take it back, that I swear, and our enemies will suffer for what they’ve done. Yes, I promise that on the heads of the gods themselves.” She looked up at Dawet’s surprised face, just visible in the light from an open window above. “You are staring, man. Put the time to better use. Tell me what I wish to know.”