Leilis didn’t say anything. She had never thought Lily was stupid.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” Lily added in her sweet little voice, childlike and yet, to Leilis’s ear, sparkling with malice. She turned to the guardsmen. “It’s obvious—the man there must be a spy from Kalches, perhaps even an assassin. And this servant of my House is clearly in his employ.”
The problem was, Leilis thought, that when a girl as lovely as Lily said something, even something outrageous, she just naturally sounded credible. Her beauty and her keiso-trained manner made her believable. And this winter, well, nobody would be surprised at a flood of spies and assassins from the north trying the Dragon’s defenses.
The three guardsmen, after the first startled instant, clearly took Lily’s accusation seriously enough. The one who’d been escorting Lily shook her hand off his arm and put his hand on his sword. The other two also reached for their swords, casting wary looks at Lord Taudde and his big servant. The servant only gazed at them blankly, either too stupid to recognize the implicit threat or at least playing the role persuasively. Lord Taudde did nothing. He might be a sorcerer, but perhaps it would be asking too much to expect him to do something sorcerous here in the Laodd itself.
Since no one else seemed ready to do anything, Leilis straightened her shoulders and looked down her nose at the younger girl with her best keiso manner, her plain slate-blue robe notwithstanding. “Lily,” she said coolly. “Skipped out on your kinsana lesson, have you? Avoiding your assignment for this evening? Planning to whip up a bit of excitement? You’d best reconsider. Practical jokes in the Laodd itself won’t please Mother.” She turned regally to the leader of the guardsmen, distinguishable by his manner and because he’d been the one escorting Lily. “You must pardon the child,” Leilis told him. She borrowed a keiso’s regal disdain for an uppity deisa and continued with kind superiority. “The deisa have lately been overcome by tedium, and I’m afraid that Lily has a tendency to enjoy flights of fancy. Normally she confines herself to pranks within the House, however.”
Lily, lovely eyes glittering, said with silken fury, “Such airs you have, Leilis, for a servant.”
Leilis sighed tolerantly. She added to the guardsman, in the tone one adult would use to another in the presence of a pettish child, “The Mother of Cloisonné House will certainly assure you, captain, that I am definitely not a spy nor in the employ of spies. Lily’s imagination has run away with her—if this is not, in fact, a deliberate prank. To which, I fear, deisa are rather inclined.” Her tone suggested, Girls will be girls. She turned slightly to include Lord Taudde in the circle of presumptive adults.
The foreigner had, thus far, seemed content to let Leilis speak for him. But now he stepped forward and, following her lead, said smoothly, “I shouldn’t like the girl to get in any trouble, you know, guardsman. But I’m afraid she’s speaking rather wildly. I can easily produce documents proving that I’m from Miskiannes, that I’m in Lonne on business for my uncle, and that my uncle has long-standing business acquaintances in Lonne and in the rest of Lirionne.”
None of the guardsmen had relaxed, although all three were now looking a little doubtful. Men had such touchy pride. They could just imagine a pretty girl trying her hand at inventing a story, and how long they’d hear about it from their fellows if they fell for a prank like this.
“Nonsense!” Lily’s voice was taut with anger, her confidence only a little shaken. “What of those pipes?”
Leilis tried to look impatient rather than nervous. “Lily, really,” she said, in her kindest tone. “What pipes? I came here to meet, well—” she cast a glance of womanly appeal through her eyelashes at the senior guardsman “—a friend. Lord Chontas merely happened across me here, and as we are acquainted, of course he stopped a moment.”
“A ‘friend’! You!” Lily said scathingly. She turned in pretty appeal to the guardsmen. “Search her, and then let’s see if there are or aren’t pipes!”
“I am, of course, a foreigner in your city,” Lord Taudde murmured. “But that suggestion hardly seems proper.”
“Sea and sky! I only mean, check her pockets!”
“If we might speak to Jeres Geliadde—” Leilis suggested, since it was clear the guardsmen were going to pass this problem along to someone.
The senior guardsman rolled his eyes. “I don’t get paid enough to handle you lot. Geliadde, eh? Come along, then, and just let’s all be calm.”