The Prince frowned, and for just a moment, a shadow passed over his face. But in the next moment, he was all smiles again, and Selenay wondered if she had even seen it. “Alas, no,” he replied smoothly. “The Swordmistress retired and closed her school before I was old enough in my mother’s eyes to be sent away to it. And at any rate, from all I have heard, the lady is extremely ascetic in her ways and strict in her discipline; some might say, she is overzealous in both regards. And I—well—” He shrugged. “I am not much like my brothers. While I feel that every man of breeding should be adept at the use of arms, I fail to see why he should undergo the same rigorous training as someone who intends to live by them. Personally, I am afraid that the Swordmistress and I would be doomed to perpetually clash, so perhaps it is just as well. It would be a terrible scandal for a Prince of the blood to be thrown out of a school for mercenaries as an abject failure, or worse, a discipline problem.”

The Rethwellan Ambassador laughed, politely, but it sounded strained. Selenay was baffled. If that was all the Hardornan Ambassador had been angling for, she failed to see what was so unflattering about it. Not even a Trainee who was unsuited to the martial arts was required to do more than learn how to defend him or herself. Why, look at Myste! Most of her training had been in the best ways of running away!

She decided to steer the subject away from the area that Karath was finding uncomfortable. “The Swordmistress—is that a Shin’a’in name?” Selenay asked, curiously, thinking wistfully of her earlier daydream of a wild Shin’a’in Clan Chief coming here to claim her hand. “I’ve never seen a Shin’a’in, though I believe some of our people in the south have traded with them.”

“It is, indeed, Majesty,” Karath replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, only that I had never heard of Shin’a’in living outside the Dhorisha Plains, and I often think I would like to meet one, someday,” she confessed. “I believe one came as far as Lord Ashkevron’s manor in my father’s day, to help the Lord with his horses, but it was before I was born.”