The moment of affection disappeared in a burst of irritation. “You keep saying that. Why shouldn’t a woman fight as well as a man?”

“Some women can fight as well as some men, child,” he said with a sour smile. “But men are bigger, Briony, and stronger. Do you know what a lion is? It is a great cat that lives in the deserts near my country.”

“I’ve seen one.”

“Then you know its size and strength. The female lion is a great hunter, fierce and dangerous, a mighty killer. She brings down the gazelle and she slaughters the barking jackals that try to feed on her kill. But she gives way always before the male.”

“But I don’t want to be a male lion,” Briony said. “I’d be happy just to chase away the jackals.”

Shaso’s smile lightened, became something almost peaceful. “That, anyway, I can try to give you. Go now, and I will see you in the morning.”

“Won’t I see you at supper?”

“In this house, the men and women do not eat together in the evening. It is the way of Tuan.” He turned and walked, with just the hint of a limp, across the courtyard.

Dan-Mozan’s nephew was waiting for her in the hallway. She groaned quietly as he stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, eyes averted as though he had not yet noticed her, as though he had not been waiting here on purpose. All she wanted was to get into a hot bath, if such a thing could be found, and steam the aches from her muscles and the dirt from her scratched knees and feet.

“You are wearing my clothes,” Talibo said.

“Yes, and thank you. Your uncle loaned them to me.”

“Why?”

“Because Lord Shaso wished me to practice knife-fighting.” She frowned at the expression of arrogant disbelief on his face, had to hold her tongue. How dare he look at her that way—Briony Eddon, a princess of all the March Kingdoms? He was no older than she was. It was true that he was not a bad-looking boy, she thought as she looked at his liquid brown eyes, the wispy mustache on his upper lip, but from the way his every feeling showed on his face he was still most definitely a boy. Seeing this one, she could imagine how Ludis’ envoy Dawet dan-Faar must have looked in his youth, imagine the same look of youthful pride. Warrantless pride, she thought, annoyed: what had this brown-skinned boy ever done, living in a house, surrounded by women who deferred to him just because he was not a girl? “I have to go now,” she said. “Thank you again for the use of these clothes.”

She brushed past him, aware that the young man had more to say but unwilling to stand around while he worked up the nerve to say it. She thought she could feel his eyes on her as she walked wearily back to the women’s quarters.