searching for the opening. To know that this, more than anything, was what she was, and what she was meant for. Despair was pointless. This was not her death. This was her life.
Shouts from behind, then, as several more horses came close, their riders dismounting. Then a Ranash man was pushed aside and Koenyg stood in his place, staring with disbelief.
“You!” he said. There was blood on his weapon, and more on clothes. But then, it had never been like Koenyg to order men into battle and not to partake himself.
“I came to rescue the little Udalyn girl,” Sasha told him, past the lethal, bloody edge of her weapon. It had cut through northern chainmail, yet bore barely a mark. Neither did her voice, which was cool and steady.
“Which little Udalyn girl?” Koenyg asked flatly. There was hostility on his broad face. And suspicion.
“The sister of the boy I brought to father,” said Sasha. “She is under the tent behind me. Look gently, she is frightened and harmless.”
Koenyg nodded curtly to a man behind her and there came the sound of canvas being moved. Then a frightened cry from a little girl's mouth.
“It's all right, Rysha!” Sasha called, not turning to look. Neither did she abandon her ready posture. “Rysha, be still! My brother is an honourable man. He would not harm a little girl.” With a dark stare at Koenyg, challenging him to prove her words true.
“You are in league with Lord Krayliss,” Koenyg observed, just as darkly.
“I am not,” Sasha said coldly. “I rode down here to rescue Rysha from your attack…”
“You left her here,” Koenyg said bitterly. “You brought the boy here too. Only Taneryn men could make sense of the Edu tongue. He helped you. You are collaborators against the crown, each as guilty as the other.”
Sasha felt a blaze of fury. Koenyg had often spoken of loyalty between members of Verenthane families, and now showed her none at all. Damn him. “If you wish to pass such hasty sentence,” she said icily, “then best you come to administer it yourself.”
“No,” Koenyg said grimly. “You shall face the trial that Lord Krayliss was to have had. It is not the prince's place to deliver that justice which is the king's to dispense.”
“Traitor,” came the mutter from the men surrounding. “Pagan whore!” And, “Kill the pagan traitor!”
“Others have tried,” Sasha said to that last, with an evil, sideways look. Braced and poised, awaiting an attack. “I stand on their bodies.” There was disbelief, and fear, mingling with the smell of blood and the thunder and screams of final pursuits across the hillside. Some men of Ranash uttered oaths and made holy gestures, furious yet somehow constrained. The men of the north had never believed the stories of the svaalverd. Now, they saw the evidence. Sasha recognised the fear on their faces—it was the fear of the supernatural, the ungodly, the unVerenthane. And she did not mind at all.
A crossbowman appeared at Koenyg's side and levelled that wicked contraption at Sasha's chest. There was contempt on Koenyg's face, his jaw set. “You shall relinquish your weapons and surrender yourself to justice,” he told her. “Do not be foolish. Your sister would never forgive you.”
Sofy, he meant. Sasha lowered her blade, slowly, and looked her brother in the eye. “It's not me who should be worried about that,” she said quietly. “When this is all over, brother, I fear few left alive in Lenayin shall forgive you.”
“IDEMAND THAT YOU LET ME SEE MY BROTHER!” Sofy stared up at the impassive Royal Guardsman and tried very hard not to cry.
“I'm sorry, Your Highness,” said the armoured and helmed Verenthane man, as firm as a rock before the door to Koenyg's chambers. “He is in audience. My instructions were explicit.”
“Princess, please,” Anyse said earnestly, tugging at Sofy's sleeve. “The sergeant is only doing his duty…”
“He threw my sister in a dungeon!” Sofy exclaimed on the verge of tears. “I want to know why!”
“Highness.” Anyse's tug was firmer. “Let us leave, there are other people you can ask…”
The city was in chaos, all soldiers called to full alert, rows of archers standing upon the great wall while cavalry mounted in the stables and made rows before the main gates. Rumour was that the Taneryn contingent had been slaughtered, though details were unclear. The circumstance surrounding Sasha was even less clear. If not for Sofy's carefully cultivated lines of gossip amongst friendly palace staff, she doubted she would have discovered Sasha's plight at