The pathfinders dining with them were ones Shea recognized. Shea’s father was seated right across from her. The rest were all highly placed among the pathfinder ranks. Not the council. Not quite. Just one step below.
Good, they were taking Fallon and his people seriously.
“If everyone would be seated, we will begin serving,” a woman announced from where she stood at the end of the table, her hands held palm up as she gestured for them to take their seats.
Shea stiffened at the sight of the woman, her movements turned wooden and jerky as she rushed to join the others settling onto the benches.
Fallon glanced at her briefly and she shook her head, warning him against asking any questions. Shea put her hands in her lap and squeezed them together to quell the shaking. She took a deep breath and directed her attention back to the woman, her eyes lingering on the woman’s face, noting the tiredness, the lines that were slightly more set than they had been the last time Shea had seen her.
The woman was every inch the lady, wearing a long-sleeved dress that flowed over her figure to fall in a graceful line to her feet. There was a small, gracious smile on her face as she looked over the table with wise, knowing eyes. The patrician lines of her face had aged well, making her even more beautiful with age. Her hair was long and twisted into an elegant knot at the back of her head, a golden wheat color with lighter shades of blond running through it.
Shea fought the urge to touch her own hair. It had grown a lot in the months since she’d chopped it off to pose as a boy in the Trateri army. It finally just brushed her shoulders in a riotous mess of honey brown. Taming it into any semblance of order was usually a losing battle. Fallon had plaited some of it before they’d left the chamber, getting it out of her eyes, but pieces had already escaped to lie tangled around her face.
She couldn’t have been more different than the lady if she had tried.
Fallon dipped his head to the lady and said, “We’re honored to partake of this meal.”
She inclined her head with a soft smile before raising one hand. The signal sparked movement, men and women spilling from several doors, carrying heavy serving trays.
“I hope you don’t mind but we serve from the outside of the room in,” the woman said.
Shea looked down at her plate, becoming consumed with straightening her silverware until it was perfectly aligned.
Fallon shifted in his seat and gave the woman a calculating look, baring his teeth in a smile Shea would say was only for show. He’d noted his telroi’s odd reaction to the woman’s appearance, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out why. He couldn’t ask either. Not without showing his lack of knowledge.
“We are your guests,” he managed to say. “We will abide by your rules. For now.”
She inclined her chin, the warning in his words well received. Her eyes lingered on Shea’s bent head for a moment before she stepped back, clasping her hands in front of her as she monitored the progress of her servers.
Fallon noted with interest that the servers were garbed similarly to the rest of the diners. They were greeted with smiles and friendly conversation by their people—something rare in the Lowlands where the different classes were more sharply delineated.
He suspected the task of serving was a duty rotated among the people living here and not given to the same group of people every time. He made a mental note to ask Shea once they were alone again. It would come in handy to know how her pathfinders thought. Knowing one’s enemy—and friends—was the key to influencing any outcome in his favor.
“How are you finding our Highlands so far?” a man asked. He was seated across the table and two people down from where Fallon sat. With dark hair and a sharp gaze, this man seemed like a wily foe to Fallon.
“It’s a beautiful country,” Fallon said. It was, too. Shea’s homeland possessed a sharp, fierce beauty that was every inch as wondrous as it was deadly. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two such opposite extremes.
A lean, wolfish looking woman on the end of the table snorted. “What a diplomatic answer from a barbarian conqueror.”
Fallon raised one eyebrow, his lips tilting up slightly, even as his eyes remained hard and watchful. “Even barbarians find diplomacy has its moments. Otherwise, we would have no doubt killed each other long ago.”
Unfortunately for everyone else, the Trateri form of diplomacy often defaulted to that which could be obtained at the end of a blade. Something these pathfinders might have cause to find out before too much longer.
“And you, little bird? How do you find your former homeland?” the woman asked Shea, the question as pointed as a spear. There was an anticipatory expression on the woman’s face, as if she fully understood the pain the question might cause and relished it.
She should have been much more delicate in her jab. Anyone could see what she’d hoped to accomplish. For all the woman’s talk of diplomacy, she wasn’t very good at it, Fallon decided.
Shea turned cold eyes on the woman. “I found it much the same as when I left. Still beautiful, still dangerous, still full of idiots. Not much has changed it seems, Eliza.”
The answer caused the woman’s face to darken and her eyes to narrow. The rest of the group’s expressions remained bland, as if this was a conversation about the weather and not one designed to put Shea and Fallon off balance.
Fallon had just filled his goblet when someone on the end murmured, “If one doesn’t count the uptick in beast activity.”
“And the fact that the mythologicals have reappeared,” the first man said.
Fallon moved to fill Shea’s goblet, letting her take the lead for now. He was interested to see how far they’d push this.
Shea picked up the goblet, flashing him her eyes in thanks before she shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that he knew she didn’t feel. She often told him he was hard to read, but she could be just as enigmatic when she wanted to be. This was one of those moments. Her expression was cold and remote. Whatever was going on behind those eyes was hidden from all but those who knew her very well.
