Page 6 of The Rising Wave

She lowered her gaze, going back to her careful movement of the needle. “Oh?”

“They think I have a higher rank than I do.” He kept his voice level.

She relaxed a little. She could understand lying about his rank. He wanted them to think he was lower down than he was, and she respected that.

Respected that he wouldn't tell her. She was a stranger, after all. For all he knew she could use the information against him to help herself.

“What rank do they think you are?” she asked, keeping her gaze down, on her work.

She hummed softly as she did. Humming always made a difference, her grandmother had told her. And it seemed . . . right.

“They think I'm the Turncoat King.” He said it in a way that he thought she would understand what he meant.

She looked up, frowning. “Who is the Turncoat King?”

He looked at her in shock, and she almost laughed out loud.

Oh, you are the Turncoat King, all right. And you can't believe I haven't heard of you.

“A warlord,” he said at last.

“I'm assuming the Herald or his lackeys came up with such an unflattering name as the Turncoat King.” She was on the last stitch, and she caught her lip between her teeth as she tightened the thread and began to tie it off.

“You would be right.”

“What do his own people call this warlord?” she asked. She looked up at him, holding his gaze to distract him.

He hesitated, and that told her he was uncomfortable with his people's name for him, more so than the one Herron was using against him.

“They . . . we . . . call him the Commander.” He suddenly looked down at his arm, and she did, too.

She had done a neat job. Almost impossibly neat.

He frowned, and then relaxed back again, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” She tilted her head, staring critically at her work. She just wished she had scissors, so she could snip off and save the leftover thread hanging from the end knot. There wasn't much of it, but it was something.

Silk was difficult to snap off, and it would hurt him to try.

She let the idea go. The thread was lost to her now.

She had rubbed it against a sharp edge of stone on the wall when she’d embroidered the poison protection into her neckline, but short of dragging Luc across the room to it, that wasn’t an option.

“Where is your Commander from?” She dipped a torn strip of sheet into the water and dabbed away the blood her needle had made, then began to bandage the cut up, more to hide the stitches than because it needed to be wrapped.

“You really haven't heard of him?” Luc asked.

She shook her head. “I've been here a long time.”

“Why?” He lifted his arm to help her as she wound the bandage around it.

“I heard something someone didn't want me to hear.” That was the truth, in a way.

But she didn't feel compelled to be more honest with him, when he was lying to her.

“You're Kassian?”

“My father was. My mother's people are from Grimwalt.”

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