“Casualties?” Dorrin asked.

“Captain Selfer’s spare mount, and one of the privates had a gash to the arm.”

The three final attackers lay tumbled on the hall floor; they’d had no real skill and no plan, easy kills for the Royal Guard soldiers now cleaning their blades. So many dead already, when she had hoped to bring peace and security to her new realm’s people. Had they all been Liartians? Dorrin went to Grull’s body—and yes, he wore Liart’s symbol on a chain around his neck. When the guards checked, so did the others.

Dorrin walked around the bodies and toward the huddle of servants. Before she could speak, they all knelt. Dorrin sighed. It must do for now, but she did not want this kind of submission, clearly more fear than anything else. She touched them lightly with magery, and found no more who harbored evil intent. For now, at least.

“Well, then,” she said. “This room will be used for those going to Vérella in the morning. Which of you are the nurserymaids?”

Six women shuffled forward on their knees.

“Get up now—you will have charge of the youngest children. Give this man”—she pointed to one of the Royal Guard—“the names of those ten winters and younger, point them out, and then you will take them to the nursery and keep them there. Supper will be sent up later. Which of you are kitchen staff?”

Others came forward, headed by a stout woman who exclaimed when she saw the nearest dead body. “He’s tooken my best carving knife, that wicked Votik, and him no more than a kennelman! If that’s nicked, I’ll—get me that back, lord Duke. And I don’t doubt them’s my pokers from the kitchen fires!” Her indignation almost made Dorrin laugh, but instead she sent the cook grumbling back to the kitchen, with orders to prepare a meal for the younger children.

Soon, the nurserymaids and younger children were upstairs, far from anything that might happen, Dorrin hoped. Now to disarm the Verrakaien prisoners—for she was sure they would all have weapons of some sort, most likely poisoned.

“The rest of you servants,” Dorrin said, “will change clothes with the prisoners. This will be a brief inconvenience.” The women servants looked at one another; a few grinned and one younger maid, in drab, even giggled, stifling it with her hands when an older woman cuffed her.

“Do any of you know if there are prisoners in the old keep tower?”

Most shook their heads; a few nodded. Dorrin beckoned those to the front: two women and a man.

“What do you know?”

“Us’n heard screams,” one woman said.

“Them guards left,” the man said. “Days agone, that was. But after they dragged in those poor folk from the vill.”

They could give no clear account of when the prisoners had been brought, or how many, or when the guards had left. Dorrin let them go; she must deal with the Verrakaien prisoners first, or it would not be safe to investigate the keep.