He turned, as if seeing her for the first time; she smiled with teeth. But she'd forgotten momentarily that this pretty boy had been raised in Essalieyan; he didn't even blink at the sword by her side. He did flush, though; his cheeks lost their pale, even neutrality.

And then, for just a moment, he looked young."You've come without guards," she said casually, as she noticed Auralis sidling round his side."This is Avantari," the youth said with a shrug. "Here, I don't need them.""This is Avantari," Alexis said, with the slightest of nods, "but we're the Ospreys."Auralis laughed.She let him.She let it happen because it was something she understood; all of it. There was a point that had to be made, by either Valedan or the Ospreys. They knew it as well; they had thrown off the rules

that Kiriel found so enraging and so inexplicable.

She let Duarte stand, almost openmouthed with shock and a growing horror as he realized the implications of what might occur. A shout, some strangled command, pushed its way up his throat and out of his mouth.

She let Cook stand back, let Fiara bend forward, let every member who fought under the Osprey

banner take a collective breath.She heard Alexis tell Duarte that this young slip of a pretty boy with his court-soft hands and his delusions of grandeur needed to be taken down a notch. Or four. Nothing deadly. Just-a lesson.

A real lesson.

And she smiled as Valedan di'Leonne leaped out of the way and landed on both feet, his hands glinting with the length of two slender, Southern daggers. He was only the second person in her

time with the Ospreys who had managed to outwit-or outmove-Auralis when he was stalking his prey.

She was the first.

Valedan's back was to a wall, although he had started out in a convenient archway, and his lips were pressed and set in a thin line. Auralis, armed, stopped a moment, and then began to pace, as if circling, a large cat who had suddenly discovered that the mouse had teeth and claws of its own. She liked the ripple of shirt and muscle; it seemed fluid enough to be liquid. And it reminded her of other such confrontations, in another court, a world away.

Do I miss it?

Yes.

She thought about intervening, and took a step between Fiara and Cook, her hand on the hilt of her blade. But a circle had been drawn, invisible, across the stone, and she stood at its edge just as Duarte himself did, waiting.

It should have been an easy kill, or at least an easy wounding, if that's what Auralis had intended. It was hard to tell with Auralis; his good humor was often burned away in a flash of annoyance, and what lay beneath it was not so unfamiliar to Kiriel di'Ashaf: darkness, anger, a brooding desire to prove one's power.

But Valedan was not unprepared either.

She watched the glint of steel in his hands, and saw its reflection in his dark, Southern eyes. Saw Auralis there as well, bearing his single dagger, cutting the air in tight half circles.

He moved, copper hair flying in a single, thick tail at his back. Steel twisted, flickering like silver flame; first blood fell in a trickle from the left side of Valedan's jaw. The hush was broken by a sharp exhalation; breath was drawn again.

And then Kiriel smiled as she heard Alexis curse; for Valedan's jaw was not the only jaw so marked, and Auralis' blood trickled down the runnel of his dagger.

"Well done," Auralis said, as he felt the dagger's sting.

The boy shrugged, and in that gesture, he looked like an Osprey. "Not so," was his quiet reply. "If we were in the South, they'd be poisoned." The dagger moved, but Valedan's eyes did not leave his enemy's face.

For just a minute, Auralis froze.

Alexis snorted. "If you were in the Dominion, you would not be fighting with daggers."

"You fight," Valedan replied, "with whatever weapon is at your disposal."

Before he had finished the last word, Auralis was gone again. This time, his pride had been

p.r.i.c.ked, and if he could not be forced to foolish action by anger, he could be cruel in his attempts to salve what had been wounded.

This, too, Kiriel understood.

But Valedan knew, and Kiriel saw the light behind his eyes flicker; she felt the tensing of his shoulders and his legs an instant before he leaped. He exposed his back to Auralis, which was risky; Auralis was in motion but not so hurried that he could not avail himself of the opportunity.

He pivoted; his blade struck.

Valedan grunted, but he, too, was in motion, and instead of rolling away from Auralis, he rolled

into him.

They both fell; the dagger had not been so deeply planted that Auralis could not pull it as his arms flew wide in an attempt to cushion his landing. Instinct.

Valedan kai di'Leonne, the last of his clan, rolled up, bleeding, before Auralis landed. His knee was against the older man's throat, and the points of his daggers-both daggers-hovered a hair's breadth above the Osprey's blue eyes.

That broke the circle; ended the drill.

The Ospreys moved; steel sc.r.a.ped against steel as they noisily drew longer blades.

And Kiriel crossed the courtyard before those blades had cleared sheaths, her own trailing a hint

of shadow, her eyes far darker than lack of light could conveniently excuse. She faced the

Ospreys, her back to Valedan kai di'Leonne, her meaning clear.

"Auralis chose," she told her comrades coldly. "Valedan kai di'Leonne accepted the challenge, and fought fairly." If there was criticism of Auralis in the words, no one spoke against it; they had

all felt the sting of his blade, either in practice or in less friendly fights, of which there were very,

very few.

"Get out of the way, Kiriel," Alexis said, the only woman to stand against the newest, and the youngest, of the Black Ospreys. She nearly spit when Duarte's hand caught and held her shoulder.

"He did choose," the Primus said coldly. "And he isn't dead, no matter how hard he tries to get that way."

"Duarte-"

"Alexis."

She fell silent as she met an expression that Kiriel had never seen upon Duarte AKalakar's face.

The Primus held her eyes for just that necessary second longer before turning to look at Kiriel; to look beyond her.

"Valedan kai di'Leonne-Tyr'agar-you have something that belongs to us."

The boy, pale and sweating, did not raise his eyes. The daggers did not waver. "Yes."

"What do you require of us for his safe return?"

"Nothing," the kai di'Leonne said coldly. He leaped back, a motion that was quick and a little too

fast, releasing Auralis to the Ospreys. They noted that he kept his daggers drawn and his injured back to the wall. As Auralis rose, the air crackled; light flared, turning into a burning ribbon that encircled the Osprey.

"Unnecessary, Duarte," Auralis said, running a hand across his chin.

But Kiriel could see the darkness in him; he was shrouded in shadow, in the anger and humiliation of total and unexpected defeat. He lied. She did not know if Duarte realized it. Auralis bowed grimly to the young man. There was no friendship in the gesture, but if there was resentment, it was buried beneath an uncharacteristically subdued expression.

"Nothing?" Duarte asked.

"Nothing." He sheathed his daggers in a single motion, taking only the time necessary to wipe

clean the edge of the single dagger that had drawn Auralis' blood. Later, Kiriel thought, he'd have to clean them properly, or he'd pay for the theatrical gesture.

"This isn't our best," Duarte said.

"And what is?"

Silence.

Valedan drew breath, exhaled, and drew another, sharper one. "I am not my father," he told them, his eyes leaving Duarte's face to rest, briefly, upon each of the Ospreys gathered here. "I am not Callestan. But I am Annagarian, and when I rule, Annagar will be mine. I came here, without guard and without adviser, because I wished to speak with you on your own terms. I trusted you because I felt secure in the honor of the Empire.

"I don't know what you suffered at the hands of the Anngarian armies. I don't care. I did not ask, or press, for your unit. You requested permission to serve me, and I accepted that service." His glance flickered off Auralis with some justified contempt. "Service such as this is better left in the hands of my enemies.

"Had you complaint with me, there were better ways to raise it-more honorable ways, if you even understand the difference.

"You said," he turned, unexpectedly, to Alexis, "that I needed to be taught a lesson. Thank you."

She had the grace to blush.

"For people who claim to loathe the Annagarians, you are the closest I've seen to their match. If you think that I will plead with you; if you think that I could hold such a one hostage against your good behavior, than you do not understand Leonne, no matter how well you think you understand Annagar." He turned, then.

The wound in his back, darkening the folds of his cloth, was an accusation.

"Wait!"

It was Cook who spoke; Kiriel would remember it later, for she, too, was willing to let him pa.s.s, and to let his judgment stand. It was Cook, and Kiriel thought that had it been Duarte, Valedan kai di'Leonne would not have stopped. But he did, and he turned, and the wound disappeared.

"Yes?"

"I can't speak for the Ospreys. h.e.l.l, the Primus can't speak for the Ospreys. But swear that we won't take Callestan orders-not from them, and not from you-and I'll serve you."The silence of the offer stretched out; Valedan's face was cold and hard.Take it, Kiriel thought, her hand on the sword white. You've got what you came for: they respect your personal power now.

"So sworn," Valedan said grimly. He drew his sword, and then grimaced. "There is no circle."

"Not in Essalieyan."

"Then how will you take my oath?"

"Same as we took his," Cook said, pointing over his shoulder in Duarte's general direction. "On

faith."

There was laughter, and if it was sharp, it was genuine. Another man stood forward. Sanderton.