She smiled at him. A strange sort of smile, higher on one side than the other. It gave him a slightly uneasy feeling, as though she knew something funny that he didn’t. Still, excellent teeth, all white and shiny. Jezal’s anger was swiftly vanishing. The longer he looked at her the more her looks grew on him, and the emptier his head became of cogent thought.

“Hello,” she said.

His mouth opened slightly, as if by force of habit, but nothing came out. His mind was a blank page.

“And you must be Captain Luthar?”

“Er…”

“I’m Collem’s sister, Ardee,” she slapped her forehead. “I’m such an idiot though, Collem will have told you all about me. I know the two of you are great friends.”

Jezal glanced awkwardly at the Major, who was frowning back at him and looking somewhat put out. It would hardly do to say he had been entirely unaware of her existence until that morning. He struggled to frame even a mildly amusing reply, but nothing came to mind.

Ardee took hold of him by the elbow and drew him into the room, talking all the while. “I know you’re a great fencer, but I’ve been told your wit is even sharper than your sword. So much so in fact, that you only use your sword upon your friends, as your wit is far too deadly.” She looked at him expectantly. Silence.

“Well,” he mumbled, “I do fence a bit.” Pathetic. Utterly awful.

“Is this the right man, or do I have the gardener here?” She looked him over with a strange expression, hard to read. Perhaps it was the same sort of look Jezal would have while examining a horse he was thinking of buying: cautious, searching, intent, and ever so slightly disdainful. “Even the gardeners have splendid uniforms, it seems.”

Jezal was almost sure that had been some kind of insult, but he was too busy trying to think of something witty to pay it too much mind. He knew he would have to speak now or spend the entire day in embarrassed silence, so he opened his mouth and trusted to luck. “I’m sorry if I seem dumbfounded, but Major West is such an unattractive man. How could I have expected so beautiful a sister?”

West snorted with laughter. His sister raised an eyebrow, and counted the points off on her fingers. “Mildly offensive to my brother, which is good. Somewhat amusing, which is also good. Honest, which is refreshing, and wildly complimentary to me, which, of course, is excellent. A little late, but on the whole worth waiting for.” She looked Jezal in the eye. “The afternoon might not be a total loss.”

Jezal wasn’t sure he liked that last comment, and he wasn’t sure he liked the way she looked at him, but he was enjoying looking at her, so he was prepared to forgive a lot. The women of his acquaintance rarely said anything clever, especially the fine-looking ones. He supposed they were trained to smile and nod and listen while the men did the talking. On the whole he agreed with that way of doing things, but the cleverness sat well on West’s sister, and she had more than caught his curiosity. Fat and peevish were off the menu, of that there could be no doubt. As for coarse, well, handsome people are never coarse, are they? Just… unconventional. He was beginning to think that the afternoon, as she had said, might not be a total loss.

West made for the door. “It seems I must leave you two to make fools of one another. Lord Marshal Burr is expecting me. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, eh?” The comment seemed to be aimed at Jezal, but West was looking at his sister.

“That would seem to allow virtually everything,” she said, catching Jezal’s eye. He was amazed to feel himself blushing like a little girl, and he coughed and looked down at his shoes.

West rolled his eyes. “Mercy,” he said, as the door clicked shut.

“Would you care for a drink?” Ardee asked, already pouring wine into a glass. Alone with a beautiful young woman. Hardly a new experience, Jezal told himself, and yet he seemed to be lacking his usual confidence.

“Yes, thank you, most kind.” Yes, a drink, a drink, just the thing to steady the nerves. She held the glass out to him and poured another for herself. He wondered if a young lady should be drinking at this time of day, but it seemed pointless to say anything. She wasn’t his sister, after all.

“Tell me, Captain, how do you know my brother?”

“Well, he’s my commanding officer, and we fence together.” His brain was beginning to function again. “But then… you know that already.”

She grinned at him. “Of course, but my governess always maintained that young men should be allowed their share of the conversation.”

Jezal gave an ungainly cough as he was swallowing and spilled some wine down his jacket. “Oh dear,” he said.

“Here, take this a moment.” She gave him her glass and he took it without thinking, but then found himself without a free hand. When she started dabbing at his chest with a white handkerchief he could hardly object, though it did seem rather forward. Being honest, he might have objected if she wasn’t so damn fine-looking. He wondered if she realised what an excellent view she was giving him down the front of her dress, but of course not, how could she? She was simply new here, unused to courtly manners, the artless ways of a country girl and so forth… nice view though, there was no denying that.

“There, that’s better,” she said, though the dabbing had made no apparent difference. Not to his uniform anyway. She took the glasses from him, drained her own quickly with a practised flick of her head and shoved them on the table. “Shall we go?”

“Yes… of course. Oh,” and he offered her his arm.

She led him out into the corridor and down the stairs, chatting freely. It was a flurry of conversational blows and, as Marshal Varuz had pointed out earlier, his defence was weak. He parried desperately as they made their way across the wide Square of Marshals, but he could barely get a word in. It seemed as though it was Ardee who had been living there for years and Jezal who was the bumpkin from the provinces.

“The Halls Martial are behind there?” She nodded over at the looming wall that separated the headquarters of the Union’s armies from the rest of the Agriont.

“Indeed they are. That is where the Lord Marshals have their offices, and so forth. And there are barracks there, and armouries, and, er…” He trailed off. He could not think of much else to say, but Ardee came to his rescue.

“So my brother must be somewhere in there. He’s quite the famous soldier, I suppose. First through the breach at Ulrioch, and so on.”

“Well, yes, Major West is very well respected here…”

“He can be such a bore, though, can’t he? He does so love to be mysterious and troubled.” She put on a faint, faraway smile and rubbed her chin thoughtfully, just as her brother might have done. She had captured the man perfectly, and Jezal had to laugh, but he was starting to wonder if she should be walking quite so close beside him, holding his arm in quite so intimate a way. Not that he objected of course. Quite the reverse, but people were looking.

“Ardee—” he said.

“So this must be the Kingsway.”

“Er, yes, Ardee—”

She was gazing up at the magnificent statue of Harod the Great, his stern eyes fixed on the middle distance. “Harod the Great?” she asked.

“Er, yes. In the dark ages, before there was a Union, he fought to bring the Three Kingdoms together. He was the first High King.” You idiot, thought Jezal, she knows that already, everyone does. “Ardee, I think your brother would not—”

“And this is Bayaz, the First of the Magi?”

“Yes, he was Harod’s most trusted adviser. Ardee—”

“Is it true they still keep a vacant seat for him in the Closed Council?”

Jezal was taken aback. “I’d heard that there’s an empty chair there, but I didn’t know that—”

“They all look so serious, don’t they?”

“Er… I suppose those were serious times,” he said, grinning lamely.