In the course of a single afternoon, the camaraderie Winter had worked so hard to build between the Royals and the Girls’ Own had evaporated. Getting the brawl broken up had left them barely in time to join the day’s march, and their assigned route took them off the road and up a wooded ridge, so they’d arrived later than usual. Without orders, the Girls’ Own had camped separately again, with armed sentries standing guard. Many of them bore the marks of the morning’s fighting—bruises and black eyes, bandaged cuts and the occasional splinted finger. The same marks were visible among the Royals, and there was a great deal of grumbling coming from that quarter.

Finding the man who’d started it all had not been difficult, since he’d been lying insensible in the dirt when Winter arrived to restore the peace. His identity, in retrospect, was not a surprise.

“Lieutenant Novus,” Winter said, standing just inside the tent they’d pressed into service as a prison. Novus was tied to a camp chair, sporting a huge bruise that covered half his face, and his carefully coiffed hair now looked more like a rat’s nest. In spite of all that, he summoned up a smirk to greet her.

I should have seen this coming. Novus had made it perfectly clear he had no respect for either the Girls’ Own or Winter’s authority, and she’d let him believe he’d gotten away with his ranting without repercussions. He was bound to try something stupid.

“Colonel,” he said. “I assume you’re here to clear up this misunderstanding?”

“Something like that,” Winter said.

“Ranker Valon struck me in the face, in full view of witnesses,” Novus said. “I trust she’ll be disciplined appropriately.”

Winter stared. Novus had a mad gleam in his eyes, and she couldn’t tell if he expected a serious answer to that or not.

“Ranker Valon,” Winter said, “told me that you grabbed her chest and then attempted to push her to the ground. Do you deny that?”

Novus shrugged, as best he was able in his restraints. “She made the offer obvious.”

“She didn’t mention anything about an offer.”

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “If a woman walked past you half-naked, making sure you got a good look, what would you think, Colonel?”

“That she was coming back from her bath?” Emily Valon, the blond woman who’d done so well in the handball match, had told her that Novus had been waiting by the path leading up to the stream the soldiers had been using for that purpose. Novus claimed he’d just happened to be passing, but no one believed that.

He gave her a pitying look. “Well. Some of us have been around the block a few times.”

“I thought the sight of someone like her made you sick.”