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The Sea Prince gave an incredulous shake of his head.
“You try my manners every time you walk my halls, Meliz,” he said. “First you bring squabbling pirate rabble onto my streets, and now an Amhara into my courtyard.”
Sorasa’s voice was acid. “I promise you, I am not the first Amhara to walk the halls of a Sea Prince.”
“That’s precisely what concerns me,” he shot back. “Does the other one speak?”
Dom straightened instinctively, facing the Sea Prince as he would any other dignitary. It made for an imposing sight, even as his stomach rolled with the last waves of seasickness.
“I am Prince Domacridhan of Iona, a son of Glorian Lost,” he rumbled.
He did not miss the way Sorasa scoffed low in her throat.
The Prince whistled a low note. “You do have strange friends, Meliz.”
“No stranger than the Sea Prince himself,” she replied.
That seemed to amuse the Prince most of all. With one last look to Sorasa, and her many daggers, he gave a shrug. “Well? What did they do exactly, to ruin weeks of careful planning?”
A chair scraped along the fine tile of the courtyard, screeching as Meliz dragged it into place between Kyros and Lord Malek. Sighing, she collapsed into it, putting one boot on the table, to the disgust of the two men.
“They set the palace on fire,” she said, satisfied. “And almost killed the Queen, yes?”
“Almost,” Sorasa replied coldly.
The three men exchanged glances, both horrified and impressed.
“After that, I knew our time had run out,” Meliz kept on. “Patrols would triple once the city was set to rights, and Erida would close the harbor. I did what I could to salvage our mission, with my ship and my crew intact.”
“Very well,” Kyros grumbled. It clearly pained him to give any credit to a pirate. “I suppose that is the best we can hope for at the moment.”
“And what is this moment precisely?” Sorasa’s voice echoed through the courtyard, low as it was. “Where does your alliance stand?”
While the other two men fell silent, cowed in the face of a live Amhara, the Sea Prince took a daring step toward her.
“On uneven ground,” he answered.
“Have you word from Lord Konegin?” Malek said. “Or has he disappeared after his failure?”
Konegin.Dom turned the name over in his mind, trying to place it. Judging by the way Sorasa’s eyes widened, she understood far more than he did. The Amhara pressed her lips together, content to keep silent and listen. Dom resolved to do the same.
The Sea Prince chuckled at Meliz. “Which failure? When he tried to kill Prince Taristan in the middle of a court feast? Or when he tried to supplant Erida with a Madrentine princess, and got the girl killed for her trouble?”
Malek shrugged broad shoulders. “Idiot or not, Konegin is the only chance to usurp Erida. Before she becomes too powerful to overthrow.”
“Our spies in Lecorra intercepted orders bound for Duke Reccio, from Erida herself,” Kyros said. He drew out a piece of parchment and smoothed it out over the table. “Sent by military scout, at all speed from Ascal.”
The Sea Prince rounded the fountain to bend over the scroll. He leaned, one finger on the page, the other clasped behind his back. Sorasa and Meliz leaned right alongside him, to the dismay of his guards.
Dom hung back, eyeing the page. It was written in a mortal language he did not know.
“It is a hasty copy,” Kyros explained. “But word for word.”
“She calls her legions to mass at Rouleine.” The Sea Prince straightened, his handsome face going stern. “Is Rouleine not a shattered waste? Destroyed by her own hand?”
“Her campaign in the north is far from finished. She isn’t even waitingfor the snows to melt, the bloodthirsty fool,” Lord Malek said roughly. He examined the paper for himself. “She means to march on Calidon.”
“Through the mountain passes.” Still seated, Kyros puffed out his chest proudly. “She knows she cannot land an army by sea.”
