her heavy skirts. As a child she would have run to him, but dignity and her still stiff leg kept her from it now.
Iancu Sala blinked when he saw her, surprise foreign on his creased aquiline face. “Vedra!” He hurried to embrace her, stooping to do so. “I had no word you were coming. Is everything well?”
“I’m fine, Iancu. It’s—It’s complicated.” She smiled wryly.
“Ah.” He brightened, straightening his immaculate jacket. Any Severoi vassal was well versed in complications. He gestured the stablehands forward, and sent another servant to prepare rooms and extra portions for dinner. Cahal led the other riders toward the stable, while Ashlin fell in beside Savedra. If Iancu thought a mercenary out of place in the family house, he gave no sign.
“How is the archa, and your father?” Iancu asked as he took their cloaks. He poured an ewer of lavender-scented water into a basin by the door and let them wash the dust and sweat from their faces. The hall always smelled of lavender and wood polish and wax.
“They’re well. They would send greetings, if they weren’t pretending to ignore this trip.” They followed him into a parlor, where Savedra sank into a chair and nearly moaned with pleasure at a seat that didn’t move. Ashlin paced behind her, maneuvering her sword carefully around the furniture.
Iancu’s heavy brows arched, but he only moved to the sideboard to pour plum brandy.
“You need to stretch too, or you’ll regret it in the morning.” In compromise, she leaned against the arm of a couch, angling her sword aside.
“Excuse my manners,” Savedra said, accepting a glass from Iancu. “Iancu Sala, steward of Evharis, this is—”
A heartbeat’s pause while she scrambled for a suitable name, but Ashlin filled it by standing and bowing gracefully. “Sorcha Donelan, King’s Talon and Captain of the Royal Guard.” Her lilting accent, faded after years in Erisín, came to the fore. “At your service and that of your house.”
Iancu’s eyebrows climbed higher, but he returned the bow with all due dignity. “The hospitality of Evharis is yours, Captain. You’re a long way from home.”
“Farther every day, it seems. But it’s my honor to escort the Lady Savedra wherever she goes.”
Savedra realized she was gaping, and took a gulp of brandy to cover it. Liquor seared her throat and sinuses and brought tears to her eyes. Ashlin sipped her own drink, lips twitching with amusement.
Iancu’s dark eyes flickered as he studied them both, but it took more than aliases and disguises to dent his discretion. “Dinner will be late, I’m afraid. Many of the staff are helping with the pomegranate harvest, and we didn’t expect guests.”
“That’s all right,” Savedra said, even as the brandy lined her empty stomach with heat. “We came to use the library. May we?” Asking permission was merely a courtesy, but Nadesda had trained her in politeness as well as poisons.
“Of course,” Iancu replied in kind, collecting their empty glasses and returning them to the tray.
He led them through the back of the house, pointing out useful rooms and stairs to Ashlin as they passed. It wasn’t the grand tour, but still meant to impress—the route took them through the great family room, lined with paintings and statues and costly heirlooms. Ashlin made appropriately admiring noises. The rear doors opened onto the columned porch and into the gardens. The space behind the house had been carved out of the hillside, and above the high walls a dark slope of trees brooded. It unnerved some of her cousins, but Savedra had always found the forest’s weight reassuring.
Beyond the garden’s lavender-lined paths and trellised arches rose the library, imported red sandstone glowing incarnadine in the dying light. High windows shone amid the intricate redents. The main house was arched and columned and sprawling in classical Selafaïn tradition, but the library had been built years later as a wedding gift by an archon for his southern bride, crowned with ogival lotus-shaped towers in the ancient Sindhaïn style.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Iancu said as they climbed the broad red steps. “No one has visited the library in months, since Lord Varis and his friend were here. Your generation has no sense of history.”
An old jibe, long become a joke, but Savedra didn’t rise to it this time. “When was Uncle Varis here?” she asked instead, trying to keep the sharp interest from her voice.
“Four months ago, it must have been. At the end of Janus. He came