He shook his head. “No, not that, actually. If you drop worthless decoys, it won’t be long before bandits and brigands all know that the packs you drop are worthless, and they’ll ignore them and go for you again. No, that hare won’t run—there will be just enough in the decoys to satisfy an ambusher without making it look as if you’re an especially juicy target, and to make certain that attackers chase the packs, and not you. And the same for belt pouches; from now on, you’ll be carrying at least two small extras, both full of coppers, and if someone attacks you, you’ll throw them in opposite directions, one to either side of your line of flight.”

She was happy enough about the planning, but visibly unhappy when he brought her back outside and put her in front of the obstacle course. “Run the course, then run it again,” he told her mercilessly. “And keep running it until I tell you to stop. Running away isn’t going to do you any good if you can’t actually run any better than Dethor on a bad day.”

And he left her to it, with a faint feeling of having—for once—gotten the better of her. Irritating woman. Not that he didn’t like her; she not only had the advantage of being one of the few people he could converse easily with in his own tongue, she was an interesting and lively conversationalist. And besides not being afraid of him or intimidated by him, he got the feeling that she respected him in a way that was quite flattering, when she wasn’t trying to get the better of him. Why was it that she entered every conversation with the goal of somehow trying to win?

Well, she could just work some of that out over the hurdles. Meanwhile, he had a class of young archers to put through their paces.

* * *

When he told Dethor of his solution to the problem of Myste over dinner, the Weaponsmaster chuckled. “Good solution,” Dethor replied. “A very good solution. But I hope it isn’t one we need to use. I’d much rather that the Heraldic Circle can find a position for her that makes the best use of her talents here in the city. Whatever those talents are.”

“At the moment,” Alberich replied, with just a tinge of sourness, having had to find reasons why every single obstacle in the course was one she needed to learn to negotiate, “arguing and writing. Little enough of anything else, have I seen.”