The next morning she went down to the training grounds of the Imperial Palace.
She arrived with her attendants behind her, dressed for work: dark trousers, boots, a leather corset laced over the coat.
"Good morning."
The four knights of the Valkyrie came at her in a panicked bunch.
"Your Majesty — is it true you collapsed—"
"They said you were carried in—"
"Should you be here? Should you be standing?"
"Gentlemen," said one of her attendants crisply, "calm yourselves and take four steps back."
They took four steps back. The other attendant added, rather sheepishly, "They've been like this all week, Your Majesty. They were worried."
She was more amused than she wanted to show.
"Since Your Majesty took command," the commander said, "the talk about disbanding us has stopped dead. Not one word of it this fortnight." He did not add the rest, but everyone standing there was thinking of the morning the Valkyrie had turned their backs on the Saint's procession in the outer court, in full view, in their new red coats. After that there had been no ambiguity left about whose order this was.
The Empress's sword. That was what the court had started calling them, half as a joke.
"Thank you, Sir North," she said. "Now — there's someone I want to introduce."
She brought him forward.
"Mahram will be training with the Valkyrie from today. He is your business now."
The knights looked at him. One of them scratched his head.
"Right. And do we — should we be calling you Your Highness, then, or—"
"No," Mahram said firmly. "Treat me as a fellow knight. Nothing else."
Two of them glanced at each other with their eyebrows up.
Then it took about ninety seconds for the whole thing to collapse, because the youngest knight grabbed his arm to test the muscle in it, and made a noise of frank appreciation, and then the commander wanted to feel the shoulder, and then all four of them were on him at once marvelling like farmers at a bull.
They have taken 'be casual with him', the Empress thought, watching from the rail, a little further than I intended.
"Stop touching me," Mahram said furiously.
Which is exactly what I wanted, she thought.
She stepped up onto the low wall by the rail, and put her weight where there was nothing to put it on, and let herself go.
"Mahram," she called, as she fell. "Look at me."
He was there before she had dropped a foot, and he caught her, and she settled into his arms and looked up at him with perfect composure while he stared down at her with his face going red from the collar up.
The result of that little performance, she reflected, was that Derek North's standing on this training ground had just been reduced in front of everyone, and Derek was clever enough to know precisely how far.
And it cost her nothing, because whatever the boy felt for her, it was not romance. She was fairly sure of that. A young man sold out of his own country and handed across a border forms an attachment to whoever stands between him and the next transaction; that is not love, it is arithmetic, and it was hers to use.
It also made it a great deal harder for Derek to interfere with either of them.
"Both of you go and train," she said, letting herself down. "I'm going to walk."
"Yes, Your Majesty," they said, exactly together, and did not look at each other.
That, she thought, walking away, is going to be a problem.
She started to run, once she was clear of them, on the long side of the field where nobody was watching.
Her mind went where it had been going all week, which was to her sister's test.
Find someone worthy of your love. She could still see the demoness standing in the dark saying it.
So: find someone. She ran the length of the field and looked the knights over as she came back along the rail, the way a woman looks over horses, and concluded with some irritation that there was nothing here. Not one of them was remotely her type; they were the wrong shape, the wrong age, the wrong temperature.
Mahram had her sisters' approval, which was worth something. He was also a child. She was not going to fall in love with a child, whatever the primordial darkness thought of the idea.
Derek was out of the question for a different reason: he was in love with somebody else. He was in love with a woman who had thrown herself off a balcony, and he had not noticed she was gone, and the Empress had no interest whatsoever in a man who was looking through her at someone else.
This entire ordeal, she thought, jogging on, is a selection contest. My sisters have entered me in a selection contest.
She stopped.
There was shouting behind her.
She turned. A crowd had formed in the middle of the training ground, and one of the knights was up on the rail cheering, and in the centre of it Derek North and Mahram of Quan stood facing each other with practice swords.
Mahram's eyes were narrow and bright and entirely focused.
The Empress stared, flustered.
"Is this what she actually wanted?" Mahram was saying. "Or are you only pretending to be reluctant about it?"
"I am following Her Majesty's orders," Derek said, without any expression at all. "I was instructed to train the Valkyrie. You are training with the Valkyrie."
An attendant hurried over with a folding chair and offered it to her, and the Empress, who was tired, sat down.
Fine, she thought, settling back. Let them get it out of each other. There is bad blood in this yard and I would rather it was spilled on sand than in my corridors.