“I … yes, my lord—Dorrin; I would be glad of your advice.”

“As I see it, this is your situation. You and your king want to marry; his co-ruler opposes it for some reason—do you know the reason?”

“She doesn’t like my father,” Arian said. “She says he’s disobedient to her and has fathered too many half-elf children.”

The Duke—no, Dorrin, Arian thought—snorted. “That’s not reason enough to oppose your marriage. Any intelligent being—let alone an immortal of such power—would know that. Either she has other reasons she has not told you, or … or something is wrong with her. Since she has been a problem for your king even before, you and Kieri must find out what it is. That’s one goal.” She held up one finger. “Then there’s Pargun.” She held up another. “If there’s an invasion, how many troops has Kieri? The Pargunese? Do you know—does he know—whether the Pargunese king is still alive? And what are the elven resources?”

Arian answered as best she could as the questions went on and on. She had learned much from Kieri—all the Squires had—but she had also spent much time on the road, carrying messages, or with the princesses; she had only begun to learn how complex war and politics could be.

“I feel like a child,” Arian said when Dorrin sat back and called for more sib. “Ignorant—”

“We know different things,” Dorrin said. “I know nothing of your taig, or your elven relatives. When I was at the Hall, the part-elves would hardly speak to me. A foreigner, from a hated family …”

“Magelords.”

“Yes. The kind of magelords who caused the Girdish Revolt with their cruelty.” Dorrin gave her a lopsided grin. “But you, Arian … you are more like Tamar than I first thought. You think like her when you have the facts. And there are no cruel shadows in your past.”

Arian thought about that. Her mother, strict though she had been, was not unkind, nor her elven father until—as she grew older—he went back into the elvenhome, emerging only rarely. “Like what happened to Kieri—the king,” she said. “His captivity.”

“That, and what happened to me, in this very house,” Dorrin said. “You have none of that in you. Though I have no elven blood, and thus no taig-sense, I can sense old evil in humans well enough. Tammarion, like you, was all light, without shadows—Kieri had enough shadows for both. You will be good for him.”

“If—”

Dorrin made a sound close to a growl. “Do not fall back into that, Arian. You want to be Kieri’s queen—well, then, act like one.”

“I would like to do something for you, Dorrin,” Arian said. “No need,” Dorrin began, but Arian held up her hand. “You are a magelord; you are sensitive to good and evil in people. I believe you do have taig-sense or could develop it.”

Dorrin looked as if she wanted to ask why, but instead said, “Do any pure humans have taig-sense?”