SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CHP. 6

"You don't have to come," she said. The words came out raspy. The effort to talk her advisors through a potential frontal assault on the gate had taxed her voice. Rose cleared her throat. She didn't look over at Kian. She knew he would still be waiting in a neat "at rest" position while she redid her hair and changed around her traveling kit. "Lord Harrod rather volunteered you."

"He is, as you say, my Lord." Kian sounded perfectly composed. "I would be remiss to disobey."

She hummed doubtfully. "I can lie," Rose pointed out dryly. "I can say I decided I'd rather someone else."

She didn't say that she could go alone. That would be stretching the limits of what her generals would tolerate. She was as competent as a royal was meant to be, but she wasn't arrow proof. If she died or got captured, it would be injurious to the war effort.

Kian was silent for a long moment. "There is no need," he eventually said.

She cast him a sidelong glance. "Take fifteen minutes and get a drink and some rations to eat on the way," Rose ordered. "We're going to be out for a while. Ah, my canteen must be getting low as well," she lied, as if it was an afterthought and not something she'd been thinking about for hours as her mouth grew dry. She genuinely would need to refill it before they left.

"Shall I refill it with mine?"

Rose shook her head. "No. Go take care of yourself. Meet me at the big red tent."

She barely caught it, out of the corner of her eye. But as Kian politely murmured "At your leave," he dipped into…

"Are you mocking that poor messenger?" Rose demanded imperiously, lips curling up. It was terrible. It really was a bit mean. But…

"I would never," Kian lied, still caught in a graceful version of the curtsy one of her soldiers had subjected her to when she'd arrived back at camp.

She threw her comb at him.

Kian caught it as he straightened. He smiled as he gave an actual bow, set the comb down, and left the tent.

"Asshole," Rose said to no one. But she was smiling.

She waited a few moments to be sure that no one had been waiting outside to talk to her once Kian left. No one came. Now that she was alone, she dug out jerky and bread from her stash and wolfed it down, soothing the ache of hunger. With animal desperation, she drank her entire canteen of water. She hadn't realized just how thirsty she was until the first drops hit her tongue.

'I don't know how Etienne is keeping up out there. He's definitely doing manual labor with everyone. He wouldn't sit while they dig. Is he just not eating except in the mornings and nights in his tent?'

Well. He was a big boy. He could take care of his own needs. If he really got hungry and couldn't get alone time casually, he could pretend to have urgent business and stride off.

…Or he could just be breaking that taboo.

Rose snorted. If any of them would, it would be Etienne. He didn't like the reasoning- it humanized them too much to their underlings. Breaking bread together was the foundation of most social rituals. The elite could of course not eat with the common, but eating in front of someone and not serving would be unspeakably gauche.

Whatever. If he was eating with someone, she was going to be selectively unobservant.

The topic of food made her stomach twist with uncomfortable nerves. Now that she was actually going to meet her brother, she had a big hurdle to jump.

'I don't think Etienne is going to like what I have to say. How am I going to talk him around?'

Rose knelt to open her little trunk. Carefully, she pulled out thin, delicate papers and folded them even smaller with a crinkle. She slid them into her pocket to show to her brother. Then she patted herself down, running a quick inventory of her gear. Belts were buckled properly, her pen knife and work knives were present, there was no stone in her boot to irritate her later. Her shift had gotten worked up a bit, tugged up by the strap over her left shoulder. She pulled it back into place, checked her hair, and headed out.

Kian found her with what she was starting to think of as his characteristic good timing. She neglected to greet him in her dark mood. He must have sensed that, as he silently fell in step behind her.

The walk would have taken perhaps 90 minutes in daylight. She moved as quickly as she could across the plains, but there was no way other than to slow down significantly when they entered the woods. It would be too easy to stumble and fall, or to lose the path and wind up somewhere unknown.

At least Kian didn't slow her down. She appreciated that. He wasn't practiced at walking quietly in a forest, but the sounds of kicked stones and breaking twigs grew a little less frequent as they went on.

Wait.

Rose held up a hand. A hard chest bumped into it. Kian moved back so quickly that she was just registering the warmth of his body as it disappeared.

He had the sense not to say anything.

She knelt carefully. Delicately she plucked several leaves and tossed them to the side. "This can't be days old," she said, thinking of the last time someone should have come this way towards her brother's camp. Her fingers just barely touched the ridges of a single footprint, with a slide showing someone had slipped in the mud. "Too crisp, isn't it?"

"I don't know," Kian murmured. She heard his weight shift. He scanned the darkness around them. "But it doesn't look like a military boot. That's someone's locally made shoe. The ridge at the toebox is something peasants do for grip."

Huh. Rose pursed her lips. Fair enough. She cast around for any other footsteps, but whoever had left this must have recovered quickly and walked more lightly, on stones and branches.

'They were too careful. A hunter would be quiet, but wouldn't need to hide their footsteps from deer.'

They stayed attentive, but they didn't see any other signs of people. They made it out of the forest into the clearing where her brother was camped, directly into the arrow point of sentries.

Rose scowled at the weapon. "You don't recognize your princess?" She asked icily.

The closest guard blanched and lowered his weapon hastily.

Etienne arrived then. His eyes lit up when he saw her. "Oh, I wondered who would come to visit," he said cheerfully. "I got excited, I thought we were going to find out who's been waving around lights at night. But it's just my sister, how sad." He continued over her sigh, "Follow me, my tent is over here."

They cut through the little camp quickly. The soldier following Etienne split off to wait- not directly outside the tent, but significantly back, to give them privacy to speak.

Etienne only seemed to notice Kian when he tentatively lingered in the entrance of the tent. He gave the other man a smile and looked him over.

'I should probably dismiss him,' Rose realized.

"You're Lord Harrod's eldest ward," Etienne said. He frowned in concentration a moment before the information came to him. "Kian, right? Your sister is Rhina?"

Rose blinked.

Kian bowed deeply. "Yes, my prince."

'... Why does Etienne know everyone?'

"Please make yourself at home," Etienne offered. "I'll send for you when it's time to escort sister dearest home."

Rose very seriously considered kicking him, but it seemed beneath the royal dignity.

Kian bowed, murmured thanks, and left. She waited a moment to whirl on her brother. "How'd you know that?" Rose crinkled up her brow in self consciousness. "Should I have known that?"

Etienne snorted. "Probably," he admitted. His posture relaxed. "Nobody with any sense would expect you to, however. You've never been good with people."

"I'm not good with names or faces," she corrected. "That's hardly my fault."

Her brother hummed disbelievingly.

It put her hackles up, because she was telling the truth. She had no idea how other people remembered so many names and faces. She might as well have tried to remember exactly how many freckles and stand of hair everyone she met had. The information didn't stay in her head.

Instead of answering, he went to the jug sitting on the table and poured two glasses. When he offered her one, she set her jaw mulishly.

"Oh, don't pout." Etienne poked her in the side and then dodged her elbow. The wine he was trying to offer her sloshed in the cup. "Anyway, he couldn't have been anyone else. He has the country look to him, and Harrod's heraldry."

She rolled her eyes as she finally accepted the drink, but Rose couldn't deny that Kian's moonlight colored hair was distinctive and foreign. That didn't mean that much, given that there had been a lot of intermarriage and good relations until the last decades. But it was hardly common, still.

"He looks like his sister," Etienne said mildly.

It took a moment to parse that. "Why've you been sniffing around sisters?" Rose demanded.

Etienne turned pink. "I saw her portrait," he said, with towering dignity.

She eyed her brother doubtfully. "Can't have been one of the marriage candidates," she said. She was glad Kian wasn't close enough to hear, but it was true that: "No one would let the crown prince marry someone with no title to speak of. The courtiers would have her assassinated rather than suffer the embarrassment."

"Their father was pretty important," Etienne said mildly. But he didn't tell her she was wrong.

'"Was important" clearly means that he isn't important now.'

Saying that aloud would be too far. No matter that it was true, it was callous. Rose crossed her arms. "Leave her alone," she said, a hint of warning in her tone. "Pretty or not, they can't handle our trouble."

Etienne shrugged. "Speaking of trouble, I think you're here with dramatic news," he changed the subject. "How goes it at the front? Did all the supplies we asked for come in?"

"It's fine, and yes." Rose crossed her arms and leaned against the side of the tent. It was sturdy enough to hold her weight. "But I don't want to starve them out. I think we should get inside sooner rather than later. Celestin and Lord Harrod agree, though they favor a front door approach."

"And not you?" Etienne fiddled with his pen, spinning it between his fingers.

"No," she said. "I want them to act as a distraction."

His eyebrows shot up. "And how do they feel about that?"

She gave him a smirk that he ought to remember from their childhood.

"Oh, no," Etienne said. He snorted into his wine. "You're being ridiculous. We have two plans vetted by generals. Why would you work around them?"

Rose crossed her arms and looked away. She did not pout.

"Rosie, you can't unilaterally change things." Etienne sounded more frustrated than upset. He perched on the tabletop and peered down at her.

She shrunk a little under his disapproval and bit her lip. "I'm not," she said mulishly. "I'm here, discussing it with you."

"But not Celestin." Etienne tilted his jaw up and stuck his lower lip out. It was a familiar expression. It looked obstinate, but he was open to being talked around. "What's the logic there?"

She dug her fingers into her forearms and looked for a way to explain the instinct she was acting on. "I think something is wrong," she eventually managed. Her voice was sullen, uncertain. Her brother's approval was what she needed most. "I think our authority is being undermined- and I think Aunt Aime knows," she added.

Etienne put a hand to the base of his neck and slowly rubbed at the skin there. "In what way?"

"For one, I think communication is being misdirected. I don't know who is responsible, but Lord Harrod seems to see everything first."

Etienne's eyebrows shot up.

"Yes," she agreed darkly. "I hesitate to say that it's just a power grab, because of the way Aunt Aime addressed this. Look." She dug out the two letters from her aunt and laid them side by side. "This one took a week to reach me, this one took 6 days. Auntie was stationary when she sent both."

"This is plain," her brother said. He poked at the offending envelope with a frown. "This couldn't possibly have gone through regular communications. Even if she'd neglected to address it properly, whoever sent it on her behalf would have."

"Which means there's either one very determined servant or a network sophisticated and trusted enough to pass this along while keeping the recipient and sender anonymous." Rose frowned. "And you'd think that would take a lot longer than regular communications would."

"The other was redirected somewhere else first," Etienne agreed. He ran a hand through his hair. "Fine. Something is odd. I trust Celestin not to be involved in it."

Rose twisted her lips. "I don't think we should." She tensed her hands and then forced the muscles to relax. "I don't trust any of Father's allies to put us before him."

Her brother opened his mouth sharply and looked around. He dropped his voice even lower. "Careful." He was finally looking at her seriously. "Show me the letters, then. And tell me what it is that you want to do."

_______________________

Etienne's soldiers collected Kian and the two set off again, ready for bed. She didn't ask him what he'd done with his free time.

Her limbs felt heavy. Maybe it was just that she hadn't slept well lately. Maybe it was the sudden drop in anxiety after talking with her brother. He hadn't agreed to her plan, but he hadn't rejected it yet, either.

She felt relieved, mostly. And it was not a bad walk, if tense once they got back into the thick of the forest at night.

"Do you see that?"

The tension in Kian's voice dragged her from her thoughts and caught her full attention. He was pointing at something. Rose followed his finger up the slope, to the treeline. For a few seconds, no, she saw nothing. And then a flicker of light broke through.

"A torch," she breathed. "Good catch." She stared, body perfectly still.

Kian shifted. There was the slightest sound of his clothes rustling as he readied himself for something to happen.

Her jaw clenched. This was probably what Etienne had seen. They were still being watched. And here was her chance to go and find out who it was.

"Are we going to go look?" Kian's voice was a barely audible breath.

Her heartbeat picked up. Rose deliberately released the tension in her body. Slowly, she shook her head. "No." The word tasted bitter. "If we get killed or captured, the result would outweigh a possible benefit."

Kian huffed. "I could go alone," he suggested. "I could report back- or you could go ahead."

…She twisted her lips. It was tempting.

'He is competent. If he got captured, he wouldn't share information. And there's a chance we could find out something important. But there's also a chance that he'd die and we wouldn't know why.'

"No," she said again, turning away. "Let's return to camp quickly. We don't know how many people are out here."

They moved in a tense silence, putting distance between them and the unknown watchers. Her ears were straining the whole time. Her heartbeat was so loud she didn't know if she would even hear the sound of footsteps in the dark. Moonlight pushed weakly through the trees overhead, casting pale, ominous suspicion on leaves and knotted wood that almost could have been people hunched in the dark.

She relaxed bit by bit once they got out of the trees and onto the plains. Visibility was much better. Granted, that meant someone could see them. But she'd prefer that to being taken by surprise.

The air between her and Kian changed in the last minutes of their walk. At least, it felt like it did. Rose stole a glance and then looked forward again, wondering if the change in tension was in her head.

Well. Might as well see. "Is there something that you want to say?" She asked lightly.

Kian didn't seem at all surprised, so she must not have misread things. He gave her a long look, eyes dark and serious. "Yes, there is," he said finally. "I want to know what's actually going to happen at the gate."

'What the absolute fuck?'

She didn't turn back to look at him, but it was a close thing.

"You aren't going to be knocking down the front door of that city. No matter what you let your generals think. You came here to tell your brother the real plan."

Rose stopped walking. She turned to give Kian a hard, unfriendly look.

He held her gaze for a moment, and then looked away. She felt a cruel flush of victory over him. He didn't have the right to question her, to demand answers.

'This is why he agreed to come with me. He wanted to find out what I'm thinking.'

"You're overstepping." Rose felt a muscle twitch in her jaw. "Have a good night. You're dismissed." She strode ahead without waiting, thinking only of the lights ahead of her army's encampment. She didn't care about impertinent soldiers.

Well.

If she was honest with herself, it made her feel sick that Kian seemed to understand her too easily.