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emotion in their scar-faced guest as he turned the spoon over and over in his hands. She, like Cherry-Stripe, was nonplussed at Inda’s reaction, but she could try to be a good host. “I remember those forks, when we girls had to do duty up in the queen’s room. Just think, the girls now get to eat with Hadand, and not sit there with those funny dishes, listening to the tootle and footle music.”
    Mran said, “Woodwinds and strings. Like in Sartor.”
    Fnor waved a hand in a circle. “Wheedle-deedle is what it sounded like. Nothing like a good strong beat, or a melody you can sing a ballad to. Well, no more!”
    Buck moved impatiently, and sent a scornful glance at his brother and Cama for their cowardice, but one was busy studying his spoon, the other the walls. “Back of my hand to music! Inda, you should by rights talk to Evred-Harvaldar. Better, your sister—”
    “Hadand-Gunvaer defended the throne herself,” Fnor put in, and Mran signified agreement and approval with a flick of her thumb upward. They had been in the queen’s training with Inda’s sister, had liked her then, and respected her now as a proven fighting queen, young as she was.
    Buck said, “Evred or Hadand, they can tell you the details. The gist is this: the king was killed. It was a conspiracy started by Hawkeye’s dad. Only Hawkeye wasn’t in on it. But the three of us were there at the end, see, on account of Mad Gallop Yvana-Vayir dragging our father into it blind.”
    Now that Buck had broached the subject, Cherry-Stripe leaned forward. “Noddy was there, too.”
    “King’s room full of blood, all his Runners killed—” Cama put in grimly.
    “But he died in the Sierlaef’s room. Opened his arms to the blade,” Buck put in.
    “Yvana-Vayir killed him. King wasn’t even armed!”
    “Yvana-Vayir went down to try to take the throne, and your sister headed him off. And when he tried to ride her down and grab the throne—” Cherry-Stripe mimed a side-cut and thrust from a sword “—she took him down. Only wounded him, because his son was there. Later she said she should have finished him.”
    “—execution in the parade court, because he wouldn’t take a knife and do it himself.” Cama’s husky voice was even rougher with disgust. “Of course they had to put all his captains against the wall. Even the ones who claimed not to know anything about the plans.”
    Inda turned his palm up, remembering talk from childhood, exciting at the time: a commander who led his men into treasonous action took all his captains down with him. But they weren’t flogged to death, being under orders. The thought of it actually happening made his gut tighten.
    “The rest of the royal family was killed by some of the Jarl’s men,” Cherry-Stripe said. They had fallen back into Marlovan, the language of their ancestors. “Four more sent to kill Evred, but he escaped.”
    “What?” Inda exclaimed. “Evred—you mean Sponge, right? Wait, wait. The rest of the family, including the queen, and Barend’s mother? Why? Surely they didn’t blame her for the Harskialdna’s plots?”
    Fnor consciously switched back to Iascan, though she would have rather the guests had gone away. It didn’t seem decent, to talk of these things in front of strangers. “Not the queen. She being an outsider, no one noticed her. As for Barend’s mother, Hadand thinks that the Harskialdna knifed her, and not the Yvana-Vayir men.”
    The king’s brother killed his own wife? “I don’t know which is worse.” Inda rubbed the scar on his jaw. “And Sponge? I mean, you said Yvana-Vayir sent—”
    “—four of his riding captains north to assassinate him. Evred was in command in the north, see, while his brother was riding around in the south. But Evred dressed as a Runner so they couldn’t find him, and Captain Sindan routed the assassins until backup could get there. Died in the process,” Cherry-Stripe said.
    Inda whooshed out his breath. “This sounds worse