She frowned. “Your Highness, can it be that the deputy courier has taught you how to make a joke?”

“Alas, I fear not. I am quite an unhumorous fellow.”

Xilsi looked astonished, then puzzled, then cast a searching glance at Elen.

She offered her sweetest smile in return. “I told His Exalted Highness that humor is like honey, known to catch more flies than does vinegar.”

The haunt said drily, “Are you comparing my loyal wardens to flies?”

Here, now, as they approached the end of their journey, with her heart singed and a powerful anger surging in her breast—it was so unfair!—she gave in to her worst impulse.

She said, “Not at all, Your Highness, for your wardens are skilled and trustworthy individuals who willingly follow their all-seeing eye, regardless of how their prince general treats them. I was thinking, instead, of all the interested parties a prince must convince were he to wish to change the nature of his circumstances. A man who wields wit strikes me as far more persuasive than one who merely has a golden rod stuck up his ass to make him stand tall, as well as the means to allow his servants to whip those who get in his way.”

“Deputy Courier, you are out of line!” Xilsi barked the words. Her horse shied, startled by the shift of tension in the warden’s body.

The haunt saw it all. “Out of line she may be, Xilsi, but is she wrong?”

Xilsi bottled up her anger. “Everyone respects you, Your Highness.”

“Yes, but they don’t like me.”

Xilsi said nothing.

“That’s an answer,” he said with a mocking smile. “Is it better to be loved, or to be powerful? I ask you.”

“Who are you asking?” Xilsi retorted, another unexpected reproof. “A Bakassar heir or this deputy courier who has not even one ancestor to her name she has ever mentioned?”

“I thought we were friends,” said Elen, taken aback.

“Of course we are friends!” snapped Xilsi. “I can still be mad at you. You shouldn’t have said it.”

“Because I’m not highborn?”

“Because a prince will be executed on the burning ground for the least whisper of treason against the emperor. All of us who ride with him will be executed alongside him if we are found to be complicit. That’s what you don’t understand! Forgive me, Your Highness.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said mildly. “Are you wrong, Xilsi?”

“No, I am right, as you know perfectly well. Don’t think I haven’t guessed the purpose of this mission, even as I’ve kept my mouth shut. A mysterious envoy can’t have come as a surprise to you, nor would you have hastened north if you didn’t know what it might mean. If Mekvo has gotten mixed up in your trouble, then I need to help him. It’s exactly the kind of reckless thing he would do.”