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He lifted his voice to fill our night. “I am a Chalcedean, and a commander and a lord, not by birth but by virtue of my own good sword-arm. I am not ruled by whining women or cowed by whispering priestesses. I do as I think best for myself and the men who have sworn to me.”

Dwalia pulled herself straighter. Her followers had bunched like sheep, each striving to be behind someone else. Odessa still held me in front of her. Was she bravely protecting me or using me as a shield? Shun had recovered herself. She stood alone and apart from the luriks and stared fiercely at the Chalcedeans. I had breath in my body now. I readied myself to run.

Stillness. Be still as the hunter and listen.

I settled myself into my motionless body. Dwalia mastered her fear and spoke back to Ellik. Was she insane? Or so used to being in command that she did not see the weakness of her position? “Your men are sworn to you. Promised to you, then? And you believe in their promises when you do not honor your own? Promised to you, just as you gave your word to me when we set our bargain? A generous advance on the payment was given to you, that you need not loot. But loot you did, in defiance of my order. You promised there would be no violence beyond what must be. Yet there was. Foolish destruction, breaking doors and slashing tapestries. Leaving signs of our passage that need not have been left. Killing beyond what was needed. Rapes that served no useful purpose.”

Ellik stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and for a moment I saw him as he might have been in his youth, wild and reckless. “No useful purpose?” he repeated. He roared with laughter again. His men were appearing, by twos and threes, to stand in witness. They shared his mirth. I knew that his display was actually for them. “There speaks a woman who knows nothing of her true purpose in the world. But let me tell you, I am certain that my men found those women useful enough.”

“You broke your word to me!” Dwalia tried to put certainty and accusation in her voice. Instead she sounded like a whining child.

He cocked his head to look at her, and I saw on his face that she had become even less powerful in his eyes. So insignificant that he bothered to explain the world to her. “A man has his word. And he can give his word to another man, for both of them know what that means. For a man has honor, and to break his word to another man defiles his honor. The breaking of a man’s word merits death. But all know that a woman cannot give her word to anyone, for women cannot possess honor. Women promise, and later they say, ‘I did not understand, I did not mean it that way, I thought those words meant something else.’ So a woman’s word is without worth. She can break it, and always she does, for she has no honor to defile.” He gave a snort of derision. “It is not even worth killing a woman who breaks her word, for it is what women do.”

Dwalia stared at him, her mouth ajar. I pitied her and feared for the rest of us. Even I, a child, knew that was the Chalcedean way. Every scroll I’d read of them, every time my father mentioned them, they were the ones who always found a way to break their word. They fathered children on their slaves, and then sold their own offspring. How could she not have known the sort of folk she bargained with? Her luriks were gathering behind us, a pale mirror of the soldiers behind Ellik. But his men stood, legs wide and braced, hands on their hips or arms crossed on their chests. Our luriks huddled and leaned against one another, whispering like a wind shivering through aspens. Dwalia seemed drained of words.

“How could I exchange a promise with you? I would give you my man’s word, my word of honor in exchange for what? The thought you held in your silly little head for that moment?” He barked in disdain. “Have you any idea how foolish you sound?” He shook his head. “You bring us all this way, deeper and deeper into danger, and for what? Not treasure or coin or fine goods. A boy, and his serving woman. My men follow me and in return they take a share of all I take. And what could we take from there? A bit of wenching for my soldiers. A few blades of good quality. Some smoked meat and cured fish. A few horses. My men make mock of your raid! That is not good, for they must doubt why they came so far through such dangerous territory, for so little plunder. They must doubt me. And now what must we do when we are so deep in an enemy’s territory? We dawdle and avoid the roads and villages, until a journey that should have been a few days stretches toward a month.

“Now the boy we have stolen dares to mock me. Why? Why has he no respect? Perhaps he thinks me as foolish as you make me seem. But I am not a fool. I have been thinking and thinking. I am not a man to be ruled by a woman. Not a man to be bought with gold, and then commanded like a sell-sword. I am a man who commands, who will undertake a task and do it as seems best to him. Yet, as I look back, time after time, I have bowed to your will. I look back and each time, it makes no sense to me. Always, I give way to your will. Why? I think I have discerned it.”

He pointed an accusing finger at her. “I know your spell, woman. It is that pale boy you keep at your side, the one who speaks as if he were a girl. He does something, doesn’t he? You send him ahead through the town, and we pass through and no one turns to watch us go. It’s a good trick, a very good trick. I admired it. Until I came to see that he has been playing a similar trick upon me. Hasn’t he?”

I would have lied. I would have looked at him in consternation and then demanded that he explain. She gaped like a fish. Then, “This does not happen,” she said faintly.

“Really?” he asked her coldly.

A sound. All heads, even mine, turned toward it. Horses coming. Vindeliar returning with his escorts. Dwalia made her second mistake. Hope lit in her eyes.

Ellik read it as clearly as I did. He smiled the cruelest smile that I had ever seen. “No. That is what does not happen.” He turned to his men. They had packed behind him, their eagerness straining like hounds on a huntsman’s lead. “Go meet them. Stop them. Take Vindeliar. Tell him we know his tricks. Tell him we are amazed and think him wonderful. Pump his vanity like you’d stroke yourself!” Ellik barked a crude laugh the others echoed. “Tell him this woman has bid you command him not to use his tricks on us anymore, for his path now lies with ours. Take him to our tents and keep him there. Give him every good thing we have there. Praise him. Slap him on the shoulder, make him feel he is a man now. But be wary of him. If you feel your resolve weakening at all, kill him.

“Yet try not to. He is very useful, that one. Worth more than any gold this old whore can offer us. He is the true prize we will take home.” He turned his attention back to Dwalia. “He is even more useful than a woman ready to be raped.”

Chapter Twenty-Two
Confrontations

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The princess may confront, or the king may make demands. The queen or prince may even threaten or issue ultimatums. The diplomat or emissary will mediate, cooperate, or negotiate. But the royal assassin, the one who wreaks the king’s justice, has none of those tools at his disposal. She is the ruler’s weapon, deployed as the Farseer king or queen sees fit. When the assassin is called into play by the one who rules her, her own will shall be suspended. She is both as powerful and as powerless as a game-piece deployed upon the gaming cloth. She goes and she acts and then she is done with it. She makes no judgment and takes no vengeance.

Only in that way can she maintain his virtue and his innocence of true crime. She never kills of her own volition. What is done by the royal assassin’s hand is not murder but execution. The sword never bears any guilt.

“I did not know how to stop them.” FitzVigilant stood very straight before an odd court of judgment. We had convened in Verity’s tower, where once my king had defended the Six Duchies coast from Red Ships, and where later Chade and Dutiful and I had done our best to master the Skill-magic with the limited information we had. How it had changed over the years! When first Verity had used it as a lookout over the water to help him focus his search for the Red Ships attacking us, it had been dusty and disused, a refuge for retired bits of furniture. The dark circular table in the center of the room now was warmly polished, and the chairs that surrounded it had high backs with carvings of bucks on them. I pitied whichever servants had carried the heavy furniture up all those spiraling stairs. Lant stood, and seated at the table were the king and queen, Lady Kettricken, Nettle, and myself.

Lady Rosemary and Ash were also there, dressed entirely in blue so dark it was almost black. They stood, motionless and silent, their backs to the wall. Waiting. Like sheathed blades.

Dutiful sighed. “I had hoped for better from them. I had hoped that when the conspirators were cut out of their ranks, something worthy of duty might remain among the Rousters. But it appears not.” He had been looking at his hands. Now he looked at Lant. “Did any of them threaten you in any way? Or give any sign that they had been aware of the plot to kill Lord Chade?”

Lant stood straighter. “When I rode with them, I was only partially aware of what had happened to Lord Chade and Prince FitzChivalry. If I had been better informed, I might have taken a different tack. And been more watchful and wary of all they did and said.”

“That’s valid,” King Dutiful concurred, and once again I thought it almost seemed as if Lant were on trial here rather than giving testimony that would decide the fate of the Rousters. Thick had been entrusted to a healer. He had already given a long and wandering account of his ill treatment at the hands of the men who were supposed to protect him. Then he had wanted his own bed. The steams had warmed him through but he was still coughing when he left us. Perseverance, very pale and nervous at being called to speak before such an august board, had corroborated all that Thick had recounted.

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