Eneas made a sour face. "That is not the same, my lady. I live there because I must, and only when I must, but I prefer to live in camp-or in my hall in the mountains." His handsome face was serious-a little too serious, Briony thought. "Yes, that is a place you must see, Briony. From the upstairs windows you can see all the way down the valley-not a person in sight but a few shepherds and their flocks in the high meadows."

"It sounds… very pretty. And I'm sure the shepherds like it, too. But is there nothing good to be said about cities-or the royal court?"

He looked at her a little mistrustfully, as though she might be trying to trick him. "You saw what a court is like. You heard them whispering about you. You saw what they did to you, because you are from a quieter, smaller place and not used to their ways."

Briony raised her eyebrow. Her problem in Tessis had been that she had enemies, one of them the king's mistress, not necessarily that she was an innocent country girl who did not understand how to protect herself. As if no one had ever tried to kill her until she got to Syan! She wondered if that was part of what Eneas liked about her-that he thought of her as little more than a peasant girl, although one who had a stubborn, forward streak.

"In any case, Highness," she replied, "some of us like thing things that can be found in cities, and even at court-dancing and music, theater, markets full of things from other places…" Just talking about it reminded her of the delight she had felt as a young girl when her father showed her some of the more exotic items to be found in Market Square, the stuffed lizard from Talleno that looked like a tiny dragon, the huge skull of a strange, horned animal from somewhere beyond the Xandian desert, even the chest of spices from that continent's wet, hot jungles, not a one of them familiar except good Marashi pepper, which always made her nose wrinkle. She could still remember the anxious merchant, a little Kracian who had bounced up and down on his heels in front of the king, smiling and spreading his hands as if to say, "All this is mine!" Her father had bought the stuffed lizard, which had sat in her room for years until one of the dogs finally chewed it up.