“What do you mean?”
“I was like this massive joke played on my father. I’m not good with stupid military rules, and I had no head for schooling. The things I was good at—like smuggling and role-playing and sailing and deal-making—he had no use for. Still—one thing you can say about Captain Byrne—he is persistent. He just kept calling in his markers, sending me back to Oden’s Ford, trying to hone this bit of bad metal into a sword. I was damned tired of it.”
Much as Ash hated to admit it, his and Lila’s lives had parallels. They’d been war orphans from the start.
“Then you ran off to Oden’s Ford. Well, at first they thought you were dead or captured, but your friend Taliesin ratted you out.”
“Taliesin told them?” Just one more club to the head.
“You think you know a person, right? She wanted your mother to know you were still alive, but she talked her into letting you stay at Oden’s Ford.”
“So the queen knew I was there all along.” A couple of minutes into this conversation, and Ash already felt beat up. Questions swirled through his mind. “Why didn’t she—why didn’t she ever . . . reach out to me? Or drag me home?”
“The queen doesn’t confide in me,” Lila said. “But I think she was worried that any contact with you might put you at risk. Ardenine spies are everywhere.” She glanced around again, as if to make sure none had slipped into the room. “Except for a few key people, everyone in the Fells thinks you’re dead.”
“Does Lyss—does my sister know?”
“I don’t know,” Lila said. “She was pretty young, wasn’t she, when you ran off?”
When he ran off. That’s exactly what he did. “Yes,” he said. “She was.”
“By then Captain Byrne was beginning to realize that I could actually be useful. Maybe my name will never be up on the brag board in Wien House, but Oden’s Ford is a great place to chat up assholes like Tourant. Being a smuggler is great cover for traveling around the Realms.”
“You were a spy?”
“Among other things,” Lila said vaguely. “My da asked me to keep an eye on you—from a distance, since following you around would just draw attention to you. I wasn’t hot for the job—the last thing I wanted to do was nanny a runaway princeling. If King Gerard found out where you were, it wouldn’t do any good anyway, and I’d get the blame.” Her gaze was frank and unblinking. “I finally agreed, but I negotiated summers off to do my own thing. It turns out I worried for nothing. Watching over you was an easy job until, you know, this year. After the death crows came, I decided I’d better take you home, but you didn’t cooperate.”
Good thing you didn’t know what I did with my summers, Ash thought. “What are you doing here? Still nannying?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been working on a long-term project with a friend of mine. We’re becoming major suppliers for the Ardenine army.”
“That seems to be going well,” Ash said drily. He rose and paced back and forth. “So you sold them a boatload of flashcraft. You don’t think that was going a little overboard when it comes to winning their trust?”
“It would be,” Lila said, “if the flashcraft worked as intended.”
Ash swiveled to face her. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Let’s just say that it was custom work.”
“But . . . I thought you said it was old flash.”
“My friend Rogan is a rum clan flashcrafter. He is very good at reproductions.”
“All along, then, you’ve been working for the Fells.”
Lila nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before? I would have been at least marginally more polite.”
“To be honest, I thought of you as an amateur—a spoiled, entitled, runaway princeling bent on revenge who would get caught and then complicate and compromise my elegant scheme. I figured the less you knew, the better.”
“I hate it when you sugarcoat things,” Ash said. “If you had access to the court, why cook up an elegant scheme? Why not just assassinate Montaigne?”
“Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?” Lila slapped her forehead.
“I’m serious.”
“What makes you think I haven’t tried?”
“That wasn’t you with the gedden weed and the—?”
“No.” Lila rolled her eyes. “The thing is, I never inherited the Byrne gene for martyrdom. I enjoy life too much to want to spend it on gutter-swiving Montaigne. How do I know Prince Jarat will be an improvement? From what I’ve seen and heard, he probably won’t be.”
“At least maybe he won’t be hell-bent on murdering my family,” Ash growled. “So. Why did you suddenly decide it was time to have a heart-to-heart with me?”