The king chewed his mustache. The Knight-Commander had the expression of a man discovering half a worm in a fruit he has just bitten. Kieri went on.

“We must think and act quickly. The king, if he returns to Pargun without Elis and proof of my death, faces rebellion and death. If lucky, he tells me, he will be allowed to face his brother alone in mortal combat. He might prevail, if the fight is fair, but he might be killed through a chance of war or through treachery. Otherwise he will be killed, as soon as his army knows he has not avenged the presumed dishonor of his daughter, and his brother will take command—as it is clear from what the king has told me has been his brother’s intention all along.”

Kieri looked at the Knight-Commander. “Something we did not know—to these people, the Webmistress has appeared as a helper, even a savior, as she has enmeshed them in her plots without their awareness.”

“That cannot be,” the Knight-Commander said. “Every man and woman can sense evil and good—”

“Unless through long exposure they have been blinded and deafened,” Kieri said. “They accepted her aid first in a time of great peril for them; they were new in the land and did not know one from another. But it is her influence that has kept them hostile so long, and she has kept them fearful with her lies and insinuations, and her punishments as well.”

“You say they were new in the land—where did your people come from?” The Knight-Commander now looked at the king of Pargun.

“From across the eastern sea, from the land below the mountains,” he said. “Those lords from Aare came and drove us out, enslaving us, tormenting us. We came here for refuge, for we had fished in these waters since time began.”

“Ancestors of those who tormented me also tormented them,” Kieri said. “And it was his people—the Seafolk—who brought me home again when I escaped my tormentor. We have that in common. It is not much, but it must be enough if we are not to see this land ablaze with war, and his as well. You know what the elves and some of the Council thought, when the sword proclaimed me. They were afraid I would bring war here, though I swore I had no such intent. A soldier, they said, could not bring peace.”

“But you did—”

“No.” Kieri shook his head. “I meant to; I wanted to. But I did not know enough—I did not know that in Pargun they believe all women soldiers—even women knights—are but playthings of the men they serve with. He believed all these years that the women who joined my Company and others were lured from home, from the protection of brothers and fathers, and then abused.”

“Falk’s Hall?” The Knight-Commander sounded as furious as Kieri had first felt.

“Yes. And his informants, her escorts—” He nodded at Elis. “—told him the same. So in my attempt to honor her wishes, and do her honor by sending her to you, where I knew she would be safe, I provoked this conflict. True, the king’s brother had intended it, but I fell into his trap the same way the Pargunese as a whole fell into Achrya’s.”