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“Have you been to Safnia?” she asked.

“No, milady, I haven’t. I haven’t been much of anywhere.”

“More than I,” she replied. “The only place I have ever been—besides the place where I was born—is this ship. And you’re the only person . . .” She stopped, turning that faint shade of rose again. “I shouldn’t talk about it. You were right to keep your own secrets. But I wish . . . no, tell me about some place, please.”

Neil considered what he could tell her without revealing too much, though he was beginning to feel silly for his caution. If she were his enemy—in league with those who had attacked Anne—then surely she knew who Anne was, and surely she knew that he must be a vassal of Crotheny.

Well, she had at least guessed where he was from.

“I can tell you about Skern,” he said.

“It’s in the Lier Sea, yes? Part of Liery now?”

“Once it was Hansan,” he said, watching for a reaction and finding none. “But now it is a Lierish protectorate.”

“I know these things from books,” she said. “But tell me what it is to be there.”

Neil lay back and mused with his eyes closed, watching the colors of his childhood. “You’re never far from the sea,” he murmured. “You can smell it everywhere you go, even in the Keels.”

“Keels?”

“It’s a range of great stony mountains that cuts the island in two, not much more than stone and grass, really. I used to go up there with my fah to see my aunt Nieme. She kept sheep and lived in a sod house. It was nearly always raining, and in the winter the snow fell deep, but on a rare clear day you could see the coast of Saltmark, and the mountains on Skiepey—that’s the next island over. It was like being at the top of the sky.”

“You lived on the coast?”

“I was born in a village called Frouc, just on the coast, but I did most of my growing up on boats.”

“Fishing?”

“When I was very young. After that, it was mostly fighting.”

“Oh. How old were you when you became a warrior?”

“I went with my fah into battle the first time when I was nine, to carry his spears.”

“Nine?”

“It’s not an unusual age,” Neil said. “Men are scarce.”

“I suppose they would be, if they go to war at nine.”

“Our enemies couldn’t be convinced to wait until we had grown up,” Neil replied.

“I’m sorry,” Swanmay said. “I didn’t mean to bring bad memories.”

“Memories and scars tell who we are,” Neil said. “I’m not ashamed or afraid of either.”

“No, but some of them hurt, don’t they?” she said softly. “I never went to war, but I know that.” She glanced at the board. “You play the king this time.”

“Are you in trouble, milady?” Neil asked. “Are you running from something?”

She didn’t answer him right away. She waited until he had made his move, and chosen one of her own.

“If you could go anywhere you’ve been, or anywhere you’ve never been, where would you go?”

“At this moment I would go to Paldh,” he said.

“That’s where she’s going, isn’t it? Paldh?”

A sort of shock ran up Neil’s spine, and he realized he’d let himself be lulled by the conversation. He’d managed—despite everything—to help Anne escape, to put her back on the road toward home.

Now he’d helped her enemies follow her again.

He looked at Swanmay’s lovely white throat and wondered if he had the strength to throttle her before she called out and brought his doom upon him.

CHAPTER THREE

LESHYA

AREN’T MANY WHO CAN sneak up on me,” Aspar muttered to the Sefry behind him. He hadn’t turned, but he knew two things about the Sefry now that he didn’t know before. The first was that it certainly wasn’t Fend. He knew Fend’s voice as well as he knew his own.

The other was that she was a woman.

“I wouldn’t guess so,” she answered. “But it’s no matter. I mean you no harm if you mean me none.”

“That will depend on a few things,” Aspar said, turning slowly. He no longer feared that the monks or the greffyn might have spotted him. Whatever was coming from the east had attracted all of their attention. His immediate problem was the one behind him.