Page 93 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

Jessa snorted. “Better than some,” she said. She caught the look on Nore’s face and shook her head. “One of the options has already been booted off the Isle. Did something untoward in Locke’s presence. Word is the Viper nearly killed him, but I don’t know if I believe that—they wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Oh?” Nore said. This part was easy to feign; she was well practiced at the art of making espionage look like simple gossip. “Who did that? What did they even do?”

Jessa waved a hand. “That Eprainish fiend, Aurelian. I have no idea what he did, but Locke is hotheaded enough as it is.”

At least Lucia Knight would be pleased by this development, Nore thought darkly.

“How odd. I wonder what he said,” she mused aloud.

Jessa smirked, glanced over her shoulder, and leaned in closer so the distance between them could only be described as intimate. “I’m not sure if it’s related, but he was heard at the pub, running his mouth about an old Eprainish rumor about the High Lady and the Viper: at the end of the war, Epras got it into his head that the High Lady’s power was bound to the commander.”

Nore raised an eyebrow. If it was true, it would indeed have an impact on diplomatic relations. “Oh? Do you believe that?”

“Absolutely not. If the rumor was true, he wouldn’t be able to use the Hand commander, and they seem to function fine. Seward can definitely do magic even when Locke is nowhere close, so…” She shrugged.

Nore frowned. Maybe he wasn’t bound to her power, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close. She would need to get Caspian’s opinion on the Viper of Osar’s temperament and proximity to the High Lady.

“How is she choosing, do you think? Affection is important in marriage, pollical or otherwise, but does she have some sort of… I don’t know. Criteria?”

“Everyone who has been put forward is a mage,” Jessa said, leaning closer, pushing a curl of hair away from Nore’s face. “Strong mages, mostly. And I would expect she would tether to us, to check for fit—that’s how we were paired in the army for Luthos, you see.” Jessa shook her head. “But she doesn’t seem interested in that. I’ve not seen her use her power at all.”

Nore glanced around the room, taking in the light and the ballroom before, which still glowed with embers. “Is this not her power?”

Jessa shrugged. “It’s the influence of it, but who knows. But all anyone cares about anymore is power, and I find the whole thing dull. Now,” Jessa said, turning more fully toward Nore. “What about you? Tell me of Lindle magic.”

Nore blustered her way through the conversation for a few minutes longer before she made her excuses and extricated herself—any longer and she feared Jessa may get the wrong idea, and Nore was not willing to go that far.

She digested the new information as she skirted around the edge of the ballroom. So one of the Eprainish was gone, and that probably didn’t bode well for the rest of their choices—which meant the Luthrites and Nestrians were left. Unless Cleoc did send someone—but there was no excuse, if Locke was going through with a marriage, why her two closest allies had not sent anyone at all.

She thought about disappearing to Gail’s room for a moment, if only to draw a web, to take a moment to think, to start unraveling some of this on her own. But even as she had that thought, she caught a familiar face as she scanned the ballroom.

Garna noticed her right as Nore caught her eye. “Nore!” she called, weaving through the crowd.

Garna lurched forward, wrapping Nore in a hug, knocking her wine and spilling the rest. Nore only barely avoided it staining her skirt. Garna was clearly a few drinks ahead of her, and Nore was glad she’d chosen flat shoes for the evening. Garna pushed her back at arm’s length and said, “Why is your glass empty?”

Nore raised her glass. “It wasn’t,” she said.

“Nonsense. Hold on. Ol—yes, you—this is Nore. Nore, this is my wife, Ola.” Garna dragged over another woman, a guard or knight. She had dark eyes over a strong nose and even darker hair, pulled up into two knots on her head. Her tawny skin seemed to glow with health in the magelight. She was dressed for a battle rather than a party: armored, like the guard whom Nore had just eavesdropped on. “And this is Nore, the one I was telling you about.”

Ol.

The name was written into Nore’s notes and circled twice, a person of interest close to the center of the Isle’s circles of power: Ola Et-Kiltar.

Hand commander Ola Et-Kiltar.

“Lovely to meet you,” the woman said, her eyes sparkling. She was, Nore realized, the other person in the painting in Garna’s hallway. She pulled Nore into a hug with one arm—the other was amputated from the elbow, her sleeve altered. “Garna is always dragging other people into her schemes, but I’m impressed she’s managed to tease such generosity out of you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing—” Nore said, but Garna grabbed Nore’s wineglass and bustled off toward the table. Nore sighed, watching her go. “I was trying to pace myself tonight,” she admitted to Ola.

Ola smiled. “Hard to do with this lot.”

This was even better than finding one of the suitors. Friendship with the Hand commander could lead her to the commander himself, which could put her in closer proximity to the High Lady. If she could both learn the true intent behind the suitors and find where the High Lady’s preferences lay, she could perhaps get to a deeper understanding of the machinations of Idistran alliances—and what each nation hoped to achieve.

Under her armor, Ola wore uniform clothing of deep charcoal, bearing two insignias on her coat: one was a silver-and-black moon, and the other was a small silver cast of a fist. Nore had not seen these symbols before on the other knights.

“Are you on duty this evening?” Nore asked, nodding to Ola’s armor.

Ola offered a tight smile—and Nore thought that trust from Ola would be harder to earn than favor from Garna. “Alas, I can’t say I’m ever really off,” she said. “But no, I was—I just came by to say hello, to celebrate Garna’s success, and then I must be off again.”