glanced back at Gwey in horror for so directly outing him and turned to me only to flinch at my face.
“Your Highness,” began Gwey, “I convinced the wretch to admit his guilt to you in the hopes that his other information might produce some leniency in Your Grace. In fact, perhaps Gonnaban should hear this.”
“No,” I said, raising my hand quickly, “he’s heard and seen enough today.” I turned to the merchant who again flinched. “Speak.”
“It’s true, Your Ladyship, I tried to sell these devils some bows, but when I took out a sample, well, they, they—”
“The Low Cauldron boil you, what did they do?” I shouted.
“They laughed, Kara,” Gwey said. “They laughed.”
The groveling merchant insisted it was true. The Kullobrini promptly showed him a sample of Kullobrini craft, a monstrous bow taller than most men.
“They’ve an archery range inside that city of theirs, Highness,” the merchant began again, shaking his head despondently. “It’s longer than a jousting run and those fellows can split a sparrow’s prayer from that far and longer. I’m ruined, Highness, ruined! The backstops for their targets have to be thick and backed with metal, they told me, so the arrow don’t just pass on through and kill someone. I’m ruined!”
Gwey looked at me steadily. “Maybe not just you, friend.”
Minutes after they left, I ordered our signalers to ask Pulgatt’s fleet about their scouts out in the Gaping Sea. They had had a report, and thankfully no more Kullobrini fleets had been spotted.
***** ***** *****
I charged Gwey’s informant and sentenced him to ten lashes and a sackful of coin. I debated whether to send for Gonnaban and let him know the latest black news from our blacker guests, but I knew the rumor mill would soon have him misinformed. I consoled myself that he would hear worse still and I could at least set him right and cheer him by comparison.
Gwey stayed the night and as we lay together, my head on his chest, I could feel his worry through his fingers playing at the curls of my hair.
“You’ve not given me your impressions, Gwey,” I reminded him, hoping to lead him to ease his burden.
He took a deep breath. “They are a remarkable people, perhaps the most remarkable I have ever seen,” he said.
“High praise. You’re easily as traveled as I,” I said.
“Well, I don’t have the benefit of an army to open doors into new lands, but my business dealings have taken me far,” he said, chuckling. Then he grew serious again. “But these people excel at everything they put their hand to from archery to…”
“To animal husbandry, ship-building, smithing. I know,” I said. I shook my head slowly. “It will be very costly to fight them.”
“Will you have to?” Gwey asked suddenly, passionately.
I looked at him curiously.
The first man I ever loved was a boy named Bernard, a squire for a knight in my father’s Guard. He had blazing red hair and was tall and lanky, but he had a dazzling smile and a quiet, easy laugh. He was gentle and thoughtful and looked at me like he was glad I was near and safe. He would often touch me on the cheek or on the hand as though to check if I were real.
We would sneak off to the hayloft when his duties allowed, and I would come and watch the jousts just to see his smile when he spotted me by my father’s seat. I would steal off from my studies and talk to him while he polished armor and sometimes explain to him how the armor was made, even though he already knew.
I even watched his first training jousts as he rode clumsily toward the mute dummy with its blunted lance. It was on the fourth charge that we all realized his saddle had been slipping, perhaps from his first run at the straw figure. As he approached the dummy, the saddle rotated suddenly, swinging that beautiful head in line with the merciless, motionless lance of the dummy. He was thrown from the horse and lay splayed in the straw, his knight and other attendants running, screaming, crying, to his aid.
I remembered thinking that he should have been stronger, better. I remembered being furious that his carelessness, his weakness, had cost so much. And I remember feeling shame when my saddle slipped on my first training joust and I lay puking in the straw for reasons no one could explain.
Gwey would never joust, neither for practice nor in war, and