Page 31 of Fortune's Blade

“I don’t hate it,” I said, sitting beside her to put our faces on a level, and brushing back a lock of that glorious hair. “And you looked like you needed it.”

“I need a lot of things,” she said, suddenly vicious. “Mostly, I need to get out of here!”

“Then why don’t we? We came for guides. Let’s get them and go.”

Claire’s impatience ramped up a notch. “You know it’s not that simple!”

“Do I?”

“You heard Tanet!”

“And your father needs to show us off that badly?” I asked, troubled.

Claire shot me a glance, as if she’d heard the slight change in my tone. But she didn’t lie to me. “Frankly, yes. Few people at court are happy about this alliance.”

“Enough to attack us before we barely set foot in the place?”

She sighed and leaned back against the stone, her shoulders slumping. But she shook her head. “No. Tanet was likely right about that—it was bravado that got out of control. Antem, the one who touched you, has a mother from Vitharr, a rival clan who is rumored to have joined the other side in the war. He probably wasn’t happy about us coming here.”

“You’re the chieftain’s daughter,” I pointed out. “Who cares whether he’s happy?”

“It’s not just him.” Claire’s hands knotted in her lap. “I don’t belong here and everyone knows it. I couldn’t stick out more if I tried. Dragonkind don’t normally travel far from their mountains, so my father’s interest in other lands, foreign cultures . . . it’s always been viewed with suspicion and distaste. And then to have him bring back a half human daughter—”

“He’s lucky to have you!”

Claire shook her head. “A normal child, yes. That’s always a happy day for a people who welcome so few children. But in my case—”

“Then they’re stupid—”

“Are they?” Claire shot me a glance. “Think about it from their point of view. Father’s half alien bastard comes bringing war to their doorstep—”

“That’s not what you’re doing!”

“But it is, from a certain point of view. I’m asking for help and giving it could be regarded as choosing sides. Something they don’t want to do, that many of them have carefully avoided doing, up until now. But by hosting us they are tacitly giving support to the alliance even if they don’t agree with it. They see our coming as making them a target, and father as forcing their hand.

“Which, frankly, he is. He could have helped us quietly, without all the fanfare, but—”

“Why lose an opportunity?”

She nodded.

Our fathers seemed to have a lot in common, I thought wryly.

“Then should we just go?” I asked. “With or without guides?”

Claire sighed again. “It’s too late for that. By coming here, we inserted ourselves into the middle of the argument raging among the clans about the war, and there’s no getting out of it now. Father thinks they’re being naive, that staying neutral doesn’t work in times like these, and that eventually, they’d be drawn into the conflict anyway. But others don’t agree and everyone is tense as hell—”

“And then we show up.”

She nodded. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought us here. But I didn’t fully realize the problem until I talked to him after we arrived—”

So that’s where they’d been while Louis-Cesare and I were being attacked in our room. I wondered if someone had noticed and taken advantage of that. Or if it really had been just a silly display of bravado.

It didn’t reassure me that I had no way to know.

“—and we have a lot of ground to cover,” Claire added, “and most of the people who could help us are . . . elsewhere . . ..”

She didn’t finish the statement, but I knew she was talking about Heidar, her husband and a prince of the Blarestri, a leading light fey house that were currently making a bid to rule a lot more than their ancestral holdings. War had given Caedmon, Heidar’s father, a chance to greatly increase his territory, and Heidar was helping him by some espionage that I wasn’t very clear on. But the point from Claire’s perspective was that he had chosen his father’s desires over hers and wasn’t around when she needed him, something that had been true for most of their married life.