“I’ll stay while you bathe,” Lieth said. “And Maelis can watch the door. They’re strange.” She set towels on one of the benches in the bathing room as Arian undressed.

“Strange?” Arian stepped into the tub.

“Yes.” Lieth put the clothes Arian had worn into a basket to one side. “They were surprised that women could be King’s Squires when we came before. Few of their women become knights.”

Arian slid deeper into the water, savoring the feeling of travel grime coming off and muscles loosening. “What about Paksenarrion?”

Lieth frowned. “She’s a paladin. And Girdish women do train as soldiers. But not the nobles.”

After her bath, Arian pulled on her thinnest nightshirt, climbed the steps to the bed, and pushed aside some of the cushions. The lace coverlet looked scratchy, the velvet too hot. Maelis helped her turn back the covers to linen sheets below. Arian lay down; though she was tired, she could not relax at first: she had no connection to the taig. She had seen no trees, no grass, within the city, only stone and brick and people and their things. She lay quietly, persuading her muscles to relax one by one, and breathed carefully, imagining a cool green breeze out of the forest. She could feel the new life within her. For the moment, safe. Perhaps the moment was enough.

Arian woke clearheaded and refreshed. The rose-colored room, though still stuffy, was less oppressive. She dressed in one of the outfits she and Kieri had devised both for her own comfort and to lessen animosity toward Dorrin’s choice of clothes at court: dress shirt with ruffles at throat and wrists, dark green trousers with their subtle woven pattern of leaves tucked into low boots of russet leather, brocaded vest bright with multicolored flowers, open-fronted lighter green coat with the Lyonyan royal crest embroidered on the back.

Outside in the passage, a man in a Royal Guard uniform waited. He bowed to Arian.

“Milady, queen, the king requested that I show the way to the small dining room. I am Sir Aldan Menisor, and it is my honor to be assigned as your guide wherever you wish to go.”

“Thank you,” Arian said.

He started off; she moved with him; her Squires followed. Then he glanced back. “Are these coming with you?”

“My Squires … yes. They go with me everywhere.”

Two more Royal Guards flanked a doorway ahead of them. Sir Aldan spoke to them; one stepped inside and announced Arian: “Sir king, the right royal queen of Lyonya, Arian.”

Arian gave her Squires a hand signal, and they let her go into the room alone. Mikeli stood beside a table laden with trays of food. “I hope you feel as refreshed as you look,” he said. His gaze lingered a little too long, she thought, but Tsaian customs might be different.

“Your people provided every comfort, and I do indeed feel refreshed,” Arian said.