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Peta let go of the sleeve. Whatever she'd needed, she'd gotten it, and it wasn't comfort. It was the truth, from a woman who meant to stand in the same weather she was asking them to stand in.

They trusted her. That was the piece the briefing had missed. Sillevia had described a schemer in a stolen seat, and Kavren didn't doubt there was a schemer somewhere in her. But a schemer didn't earn the way these women's shoulders came down when Diana walked into the room.

* * *

On the way out, a warrior of the old blood stepped into the corridor to block them.

Kavren knew him by reputation. Vessad, a hawk of the Dowager's wider faction, one of the many who called the alliance a leash. He looked at Diana and didn't bother to hide his contempt.

"The consort walks with a guard now," he said, to the corridor more than to her. "One wonders what a human keeps that needs guarding. Or whether the Dowager simply likes to know where the king's pet spends her mornings."

Kavren felt his own weight shift toward the man before he'd decided anything. Diana stopped him with a small motion of one hand, without even looking at him.

"You're Vessad," she said, pleasant as anything. "Third company, eastern watch. Your section lost four warriors to a Drog breach last cycle, because the perimeter survey your captain filed was two seasons out of date. I read the report." She tipped her head. "I also read the one where the settlement your section is meant to protect went to half rations that same cycle, and I moved a grain allocation to keep its children alive. You'd know that, if you spent half the attention on your supply lines that you spend on my mornings."

Vessad said nothing.

"Guard your corridor, Vessad." She was already walking. "I've got a council to be late for."

She left him there. There was no answer that didn't make him smaller, and Kavren fell in behind her with a cold little understanding settling into him. Whatever else this woman was, she'd chosen it, and she was very good at it.

"You could have let me handle that," he said. He hadn't meant to say anything. It came out anyway.

"You're my guard, not my argument." She didn't slow. "I've been handling men like Vessad since before this planet knew Earth existed. But I'll keep you in reserve. It helps to have a blade in the room even when you don't draw it."

"That's most of the job."

"Is it." She glanced back, and something in the look said she'd just moved him to a different column in her head. "Then we'll get along."

He didn't answer. He wasn't sure he was allowed to want to.

* * *

By midmorning she turned for the council chamber, and Kavren understood without being told that the real work of her day was only starting.

"Wait out here," she said at the doors. "They won't let a Dowager's guard onto the floor, and I'd hate to give the hawks the pleasure of throwing you out." She almost smiled. "Try to look like you're not enjoying the show."

"I never enjoy anything," Kavren said. "It's regulation."

That earned him a real look, quick and surprised, as if she hadn't expected the blade to own a sense of humor. Then she gathered herself, the way a warrior sets his weight before a fight he means to win. She walked through into the noise of the chamber and became, in a single step, the consort the whole court thought it knew.

Kavren took his post against the wall and turned the morning over.

The Dowager had sent him to find a soft spot in a stolen seat, a manipulator who worked on Weredragon hearts. He'd spent one morning behind her and found none of it. He'd found a strategist who fought with numbers, an advocate the settlements trusted and the human women leaned on, a woman who'd put a hawk in his place with a supply figure and never raised her voice.

None of it matched the map he'd been handed, and a soldier learns to be uneasy when the ground doesn't match the map. Ground that doesn't match the map is where men get killed.

He was uneasy. He just couldn't work out why the unease felt less like a warning and more like the first edge of something he didn't have a name for.

That night he'd give the Dowager a report, and he already knew what it would say. Politically able. Effective in mixed rooms. Methods that lean on numbers, not charm. Every word of it true, and none of it the truth.

He told himself it was a simple assignment. Watch a clever woman, report what she did, hold his post. He'd done harder in worse places, against enemies that bled.

He was wrong about that. He just didn't know it yet.

CHAPTER 3

*** KAVREN ***