Ingrey blinked. Hetwar had named her only, Lady Ijada, some minor heiress in the Badgerbank tangle, five gods help us. “That is an Ibran patronymic, surely.”
“Chalionese,” she corrected coolly. “My father was a lord dedicat of the Son's Order, and captain of a Temple fort on the western marches of the Weald, when I was a child. He married a Wealding lady of kin Badgerbank.”
“And they are…dead?” Ingrey hazarded. She tilted her head in cold irony. “I should have been better protected, else.”
“Um…um…” After a moment's thought, Ulkra gestured them to follow. He did not, Ingrey noticed, hesitate to turn his back upon the girl. This prisoner did not fight or bite or scratch her jailers, it seemed. Her pace, following him, was steady. At the end of the next passage, Ulkra waved to a window seat overlooking the back side of the keep. “Will this do, my lord?”
“Yes.” Ingrey hesitated, as Lady Ijada gracefully swept her skirts aside and seated herself on the polished boards. Should he retain Ulkra, for corroboration, or dismiss him, to encourage frankness? Was the girl likely to become violent again? The unbidden picture of Ulkra crouching in the corridor above this one, waiting in the dark for screams to stop, troubled his mind. “You may go about your tasks, housemaster. Return in half an hour.”
Ulkra frowned uncertainly at the girl, but bowed himself out. Boleso's men, Ingrey was reminded, were out of the habit of questioning the sense of their superiors' orders. Or perhaps it was that any who dared were got rid of, one way or another; and these were the remainder. Residue. Scum.
A little awkwardly, for the short length of the seat forced them