"Nein'a," he panted. "Leesil is gone. He's run from the city." Her husband's disheveled hair hung forward across his sweating brow. Gavril was nearly the same height as she, but there the resemblance ended. Plain-featured with dun-colored hair and eyes, he wore a short beard peppered with gray that hid the lower half of his face. No one who met him once would ever remember him. As a spy and assassin, this was but one of his strengths.

Nein'a was his contrast in all ways-tall compared to humans, with silken white-blond hair tied in a coil. More often she wore it loose down her back and rucked it behind her elongated ears whenever she wished to accentuate her strange appearance. Her skin was a golden brown. Almond-shaped amber eyes, larger than a human's, dominated her triangular face. They captivated any human male who stared at her too long. As a spy and assassin, this was her strength.

Nein'a served as a distraction at Darmouth's rare evening events, putting off guard any noble or officer her lord suspected of duplicity. Such men eagerly tried to impress her with whispered words of their affluence in the province, and how much they could offer for her favor. But her whole world had just shifted-hers and her husband's.

Her heart pounded slowly inside her narrow rib cage, and she shook her head. "Leesil is upstairs, asleep in his bed."

"No." Gavril looked in her eyes. "He is gone."

Nein'a closed her large eyes. Leesil had abandoned them?

"Darmouth will hang us from the keep walls," Gavril said, and he pointed at her. "Change, and grab weapons. I will retrieve our store of coins."

Of the three of them, one always remained in the house. The only exception was when she was called to one of Darmouth's evening gatherings and remained under her lord's watchful eyes. Only then were her husband and son both free to leave their home. Gavril sometimes took Leesil to a little inn at the backside of the merchant district. But one of them was always a hostage to ensure the others' obedience. Yet Leesil, her son, had fled the city of Venjetz.