Chapter Two

“He’s certainly tall enough, isn’t he, Milady?”

“Yes, Marthya, he is,” Leeana Bowmaster agreed, and the maid hid a small smile at her youthful mistress’ repressive tone. There was a reason for that repressiveness, she thought, and managed somehow not to giggle at the reflection.

“Pity about the ears though, Milady,” she continued in an impishly innocent tone. “He could be almost handsome without them.”

“ ’Handsome’ isn’t exactly the word I’d choose to describe him,” Leeana replied. Although, if she’d been prepared to be honest with her maid (which she most emphatically was not), she would have argued that the man in question was quite handsome even with the ears. Indeed, the undeniable edge of otherness they lent him only made him more exotically attractive.

“Well, at least he comes closer to handsome than his friend does!” Marthya observed, and this time Leeana chose to make no response at all. Marthya had known her since childhood, and she was only too capable of putting isolated comments together to divine her charge’s thoughts with devastating accuracy. Which was not something Leeana needed her—or anyone else!—doing at this particular moment. Especially not where the current object of their attention was concerned.

The two of them stood in the concealing shadows of the minstrel gallery above Hill Guard Castle’s great hall. Below them, Leeana’s father and a dozen or so of his senior officers had just risen to greet two new arrivals. Well, not new, precisely. They’d been living at Hill Guard for weeks now. But they’d been away for several days, on a visit to their own people, and Leeana was afire with curiosity, among other things. Even her father (who any unprejudiced soul must concede was the best father in the Kingdom) sometimes forgot to mention interesting political information or speculation to a mere daughter. Besides, the newcomers fascinated Leeana. She was a Sothoii. No one had to tell her about the bitter, eternal enmity between her own people and the hradani. But these two were utterly at odds with the popular stereotype of their people, which would have made them interesting enough without all of the political ramifications of their presence.

And, she admitted, Marthya was quite correct about how tall her father’s guest—or captor, depending upon one’s perspective—was.