Bierdé bit back an urge to call her 'sky gazer' in quipping jest.

"You would surely know better than I," he answered, with a diplomatic chortle. "I've been as far as your own homeland in my travels, but never have I ventured into the Suüd, and it is just a day's march into the mountains of the Coïnagetes with many navigable valleys between us and them."

He understood the importance of time to both her trade in the dark arts and the Royal Veiled Winter Couriers to which she was a pretender.

More of a mystery to him was the occasional gaze she would give the cemetery behind the gates when she thought Bierdé to be too distracted by his own vainglorious meandering to notice her drifting attention.

Did she fear to tread so close to where many of her victims presumably lie dead? Still, she was not what he expected from her reputation.

He expected to be met with a cold-blooded reptile in human guise. Some wilder rumors claimed her to be a shape-shifter, but meeting her in the flesh made that preposterous.

Having mingled amongst the gods and those that directly served them at the court of the Sunwelder, he was also aware of Leresai's uniqueness amongst the handmaidens who served Roethella, Lady Intrigue. She could not take on a glamour. Illusion being utterly and innately lost on her.

She instead relied for her guises on mere professional-grade stagecraft, and nothing more. They said she routinely acted in plays, and so effective were her guises no one but her intimates knew which actress was her pseudonymous cover.

No, this woman was all too human. It was a mistake for him to have met her in person. He wanted to appraise her mettle, but now he regretted having to send her to her likely death.

He noticed her lips quivered in agitation. He knew she was about to speak as she tended to avoid lulls in conversation.

"You were an emissary in the court of the Sunwelder's own brother, did you ever meet the God, himself?"

"But of course. The time that Mer'Kendretta accompanied me to Nevespora we were in his party to attend his performance where he played himself in the play A Peace Reconsidered."

Then Bierdé purposely delivered Sunwelder's infamous lines in a ham-fisted manner.

"Curséd rivals! Blesséd Peers! I purge the contagion from the air that is fraught between us. Make what you will of this climate. Not a single ere will I admit, but please do bid your stay."

T'nonnon'B's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. They passed several merchant carts carrying goods back to the warehouse district for the evening. The teamsters turned to watch her giggle with fey abandon.

With her composure returned, she said, "in defense of my Lord, the two nations to that treaty he overseen did insist as a term of condition that he perform that very part on stage. He had no prior experience."

"They added the term in jest! Almost completely he did mangle those lines, rendering them senseless."

"Be that so, sir, it was still a matter of good faith. A god he may be, but he is still an elf of his clan."

Bierdé found laughter surprisingly easy in her presence. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"

"I adore it that you even try."

The bridge to the palace was now just a block before them. The road, a long flat street through a small but affluent market, leveled straight into the narrow brick floor bed leading onto the bridge.

It had to go as planned as formulated by the Alliance of Necessity. They could not afford another failed attempt. Lord Carro kept silent afterward to cover his own duplicitous actions. To back out now, and give the assassin warning, as he was now tempted to do, would imperil everything.

He gazed askew towards the Sgoëthe rider with his eyes hidden under his visor. She would not be here this night by his side if she had not accumulated much blood on her hands.

Still, who was he to impugn? In all the lands of the Imperium a second-born royal daughter, the demoiselle, was sent to the Temple upon achieving womanhood.

For one born into Northern Isles nobility of Sgoëthe blood pure, as Princess Leresai Fervarryn had been, to serve the gods was especially humiliating. Only she knew why she continued to do so, and what motivated her likely had purpose beyond his knowledge to render judgment.

The bridge expanded in his view, and she finally allowed silence to come between them, likely to concentrate her attention on what lay ahead. His voice had grown too coarse to accommodate her with another story.

Leresai's eyes fixed willfully ahead. The slightest of smiles creased her face. That was her only tell. The creases around her eyes and lips when she spoke or reacted expressively.

Though her guise was professional, her Haute Elven fluent, most likely taught to her by Roethella herself, she aged as a human aged. A thirty-seven year-old woman even with the gift of the silver would appear older than an elven woman of one hundred and fifty.

He pulled his reins before they came to the bridge.

"Halt for a moment," he requested. His voice but a soft whisper.

Her smile twisted, appearing confused, but she complied.

"Wherever our paths lead us after this, I want you to know, T'nonnon'B, this has been for me the most enjoyable evening I have had in many years. Your company has been most pleasant."

Her neck strained tightly. She nodded slowly with long platinum lashes blinking.

"I thank you, Captain. After many nights on the road, not a civilized tongue, but rogues cant and sailor swear oaths for all those days, I've been most fortunate to spend this evening in the company of a warrior bearing... a higher purpose. Your company has been one of renewal for me."

She sounded sincere. If an act on her part, it undoubtedly possessed some truth behind it. A lump thickened in his throat. Bierdé relieved it with a cough.

"Is there anything else you wish to tell me," she did pry.

"No, T'nonnon'B. We have our mutual duties to fulfill."

With that said, he clenched his reins and they continued onward to the red bricks of the bridge leading into the palace.