Desert, do they? Well, then, the Long Sand will swallow them up!”
“With Jastri’s troops added to Roelstra’s, there are nine hundred across the Faolain,” he warned.
Sioned forced herself to straighten up. She held out both hands, faradhi rings glinting, the emerald nearly on fire. “Look at them, Davvi. Does Roelstra have a single ally who wears them? This is what Andrade wanted all along. Not this way, I know, but faradhi princes are her goal. I have Fire itself at my call. They’re worth at least those nine hundred.”
“Sioned, I don’t know much about Sunrunners, but I do know that your oaths forbid you to kill.”
“And my oaths as a princess? As a wife? Andrade knew what she was doing when she put me forward as Rohan’s bride. I think she counted on our breeding up faradhi children—but I’m barren, Davvi. The Plague ended my last hope of having a child. So it falls to me to use what I know and what I am.” She gave him a small, feral smile. “I don’t think Andrade counted on that. But she’s saddled with it, and if I know her, she’ll ride where she’s reined. She’s no fool.”
Davvi’s forehead creased even more deeply with worry. “Don’t fly so high, Sioned,” he cautioned.
“Ah, but I’m married to the dragon prince, brother.”
Princess Tobin, splendid in a wine-red silk gown, entered her sons’ rooms to bid them goodnight. She was in a hurry, for her hair was yet undone and she was giving a small farewell dinner for the Syrene ambassador that evening. Tossing the heavy braid over her shoulder, she went into the bedchamber prepared to do battle with the rambunctious twins. Rare were the nights when they slid meekly into their beds, and any night when they did meant either illness or scheming.
Sure enough, they were engaged in a pillow fight with their tutor and the hapless pair of squires assigned to them. The latter had barricaded themselves behind overturned chairs. Tobin sighed, knowing that the time required to calm the skirmish would make her late for dinner.
“Enough!” she exclaimed into the uproar. The tutor, about to grab a royal ankle and initiate an assault with an embroidered cushion, looked up, flushed scarlet, lost his balance, and toppled into an undignified heap. The squires leaped from behind the furniture and fled. Deprived of their quarry, the twins armed themselves with bed-pillows nearly as big as they were and stalked the tutor. Tobin marched forward and, gathering a handful of nightrobe at the scruff of each neck, shook her sons playfully.
“Two against one—is that the behavior of a knight?” she scolded. “Leave poor Gervyn alone!”
Dark-haired, blue-eyed, as alike as dragons hatched from the same egg, Sorin and Andry showed no signs of repentance. Cheated of their victim, who had wisely picked himself up and hurried after the squires, they pelted each other instead, squealing with laughter when a seam split and feathers flew.
“By the Storm Devil, what am I going to do with you?” Tobin growled, her gown now liberally dusted with feather-snow. Scooping up a twin in either arm, she deposited them in their beds and stood over them with what she hoped was a stern glare. But the absurdity of the attempt when covered in white feathers was compounded by the mischievous grins decorating her offspring’s faces. Tobin gave it up as useless, and laughed. “You’re pests and I don’t know what I ever did to merit you,” she said, hugging each of them in turn. “I ought to blister your bottoms.”
“With Sunrunner’s Fire, the way Sioned said she would?” Sorin asked pertly.
“We didn’t believe her, either,” Andry put in with a smug smile, bouncing from his bed to his brother’s for his share of maternal affection.
Tobin kissed them both and snuggled them. “Let me explain it to you this way. If you come up with any more pranks, jokes, or smart ideas, then you won’t be allowed to go to Stronghold this year while your father and I are at Waes.”
“But Sioned promised we could see dragons!” Sorin wailed.
“And it’d be a shame if your behavior prevented her from keeping her promise, wouldn’t it? Now, to sleep with you. After riding all afternoon and that minor war you two just staged, don’t you dare tell me you’re not sleepy!”
Andry’s small frame suddenly tensed in her embrace. The boy’s dark head turned to the windows where the moons’ silvery light shone through the casement onto the bed. His blue eyes were