Chieh and Lug and a handful of others burst upwards. Deyandara put her back to the wall, her hand on the knife hidden in her sling, but they hardly spared her a glance. Lug, flushed and sweating, and another couple of big men knelt down on the door, holding it closed against some battering from below. Chieh dragged at Ketsim, who groaned heavily and struck out at her, fumbling, half-falling from the bed. They were all shouting in Grasslander, at one another, at whoever was below, Deyandara couldn’t tell. “Marnoch!” she shouted, and that did draw Chieh’s attention. The woman left Ketsim and crossed the room in three long strides to hit her. “Not your bloody allies,” she snarled. “This lot want you as dead as us. That weasel-faced eastern lord’s named himself king.” Lord Fairu had said a pair of eastern lords had driven his folk from their land, and one was allied with the Marakanders. . . . There had been a Praitan at the feast she might have described as weasel-faced, if she’d been in any mind to describe him at all.
