“No,” Kieri said. “I do not go back on my word. But her land and mine are at risk of war, and her father, Pargun’s king, would have her know what is happening.”

Elis opened her mouth, glanced at the Knight-Commander, and closed it again. Kieri turned to the king of Pargun.

“She is here,” he said. “And, you can see, unharmed. Have speech with her, if you would.” Down the table, he saw Elis pale even more; her eyes were wide.

“Daughter,” the king of Pargun said. He cleared his throat. “Elis, the king knows … you must know … I did not, on my honor, want you to kill this king. What Countess Settik told you was a lie.”

“Your honor!” she said, her voice edged with scorn. The Knight-Commander touched her arm; she folded her lips.

“I did break my word to you, that is true,” the king said. “I did have you drugged and brought here—I thought your wish to live alone was but a willful girl’s daydream, and you owed duty to serve Pargun in some way. Here, as a king’s wife, you could do that, and this man—though as I thought a rough soldier—would neither fear you nor be disgusted by your own rough ways.”

Elis said nothing, staring at Kieri’s sword on the table with lips folded tight.

“I did not know, until this king told me of his talks with you, about the poisoned knife. I did not know that my brother planned to challenge me for the kingdom and so he told me—told all the court—that this king had not only refused to wed you, but had sold you to a brothel of soldiers.”

Her head came up; her eyes flashed. “Einar?”

“Indeed. And before all he questioned my judgment and my fitness to rule. If I was so weak that for peace I would send my daughter to such dishonor, and not avenge her myself, with my own hands, then it was time for a better man, a stronger man, to rule Pargun or the whole kingdom would be sold like a slave.” The king swallowed. “It was he who urged me on to send you in the first place.”

“And now,” Kieri said, “the Pargunese army waits across the river for their chance to attack and fire our forests and burn us all.”

“Burn the forest?” the Knight-Commander said.

“Yes,” the king of Pargun said. “It is what Einar said he would do to avenge both me, if I did not come back alive with proof that I had killed this king, and you, Elis. Our funeral pyre, to cleanse our honor and that of Pargun.”

“You burn your own dead?” the Knight-Commander said, in a tone of horror.

“You do not?” the king said. “But—but how do you free their spirits, if you do not give them an honorable fire?”

Kieri spoke, before that got out of hand. “We can discuss later the ways of honoring the dead,” he said. “But you must know, Sir King, that we burn only those whose evil threatens the land: orcs, other vile creatures, and the worst of criminals. Here is another difference between us that could be easily misunderstood.”