“I’m skeptical,” she continued. “He looks like any other Selwassan I’ve seen in my life. Maybe Elio’s wrong.”
“How many Selwassans have you seen?” Burke asked, and for once, George wasn’t annoyed by the question.
“Fair,” Hil replied, giving up her initial argument, though her pinched brow and crossed arms said she wasn’t fully on boardwith the assessment. “If he’s an earl, we have a diplomatic disaster on our hands. You recognize that, right?”
“Right. Hear me out, Hil. His uncle met with Gianis and Marinos.”
“Hisuncle?” Dunstan scoffed, trapped in a perpetual state of disbelief.
“His uncle, whom he hates. What we have here is a potential new friend who happened to hear most of that conversation, as we suspected.” She took a big bite of bread and stared down each of her friends in turn.
“So you believe him, no questions asked?”
“No. I sent off missives last night. One went to the Djemirian, back in Sorhaven, where his signet ring and belongings were supposedly left behind.”
A gruff sound came from the back of Dunstan’s throat.
“Do you all know anything about Midlake, in Selwas? The current earl?” She knew the earldom was real, but she’d been rather wrapped up in her own kingdom’s affairs in recent years and wasn’t exactly invested in international politics. Her interest had recently become vested.
“It changed hands around three years ago,” Dunstan offered.
“In line with what Elio said,” George commented.
Dunstan continued, “With Selwas’s weird names—”
“What’s weird about them?” Burke cut in.
Hildy humored him with a reply, “Boys are given their father’s name, girls are given their mother’s. Titles down there can go to men or women, so the surnames associated with them change all the time.”
“I wish I had my mamma’s surname,” George mused as that familiar pang of loss plopped into her chest, sending ripples of grief outward. “May the gods carry her to the stars.”
“To the stars,” her friends murmured.
“I know the title stayed in the Yaranbur family,” Dunstan continued. “Could be a cousin of the prior earl who took it on, but I think the new earl is his son. Probably fairly young. Don’t know anything about it beyond that.”
Eyeing Dunstan incredulously, George said, “You knew all that, but when I said ‘Midlake’ you said ‘gullible.’”
“I said gullible later, actually.”
“That wasn’t a question.” She threw a balled-up bit of bread at his head.
“Where do we stand?” Burke asked as Hil pressed a thumb into her temple.
“He showed me how to disarm him.”
“Disarmhim? He attacked you?” The whites of Dunstan’s eyes stood out like two moons against his brown skin. Frustrated, he stood from the table and paced the courtyard.
George waved off his concerns and went on to tell them about Isahn’s watercoursing, how he showed her he could feel through it, and how to cut off his magic. Then, she oh-so-casually dropped in that he’d been listening to them for days.
“What?!” her friends shouted at the same time, scattering a gathering of birds from the branches of a gnarled olive tree.
After much,muchcajoling, she brought them around to her perspective: Heprobablywasn’t a liar, and he might be helpful.
“How do we know that Peros guy is even his uncle? Why should we trust he isn’t a double agent? You really don’t think this could be some sort of trap?Listen in for days,show you one way to disarm him, lull us all into a false sense of security, and thenattack!?” Burke’s bevy of questions grew progressively more frantic.
“No.” George was resolute.
“To...?”
