"I've never heard a man declare himself handsome. It's rather bold to measure one's own looks, isn't it? Or are you basing your declaration on the giddy giggling of girls too drunk to see you properly?"

"I don't need others to tell me what is true. I've encountered a mirror or two in my life. Besides, I am a man of many talents, but humility does not number among them."

"Humility is a virtue, not a talent."

"I am a man of many vir—"

"No, you bloody well aren't," said Uachi, gazing ahead with a face as calm as the blue sky ahead of them. He had his reins wrapped loosely around one gloved hand, his cowl hanging around his neck like a scarf. After many weeks on the road, he had given up hiding his face. Aside from his pet shadowcat, Farra, and Diarmán himself, there was no one to see the mottled scar on Uachi's left cheek and jaw. It was a mark that had become familiar now.

"Stop glaring at me," said Uachi without even glancing Diarmán's way. "If you wanted somebody to flatter you, you chose the wrong traveling companion."

"I'm not glowering," Diarmán retorted. He had been, of course, but he consciously smoothed his features. "And I don't remember choosing you at all."

"I didn't ask you to come north with me, either. Perhaps it's our fate to be inconvenient to one another."

"You can say that again. You are like a wart on the bottom of a toe: as painful as it is unsightly."

"Well, if you truly wanted flattery, you should not have told me you have warts."

Diarmán stiffened. His horse, a daintier specimen than Uachi's, turned her head as he inadvertently tugged the rein, and he found himself temporarily waylaid as his mount sidled several steps toward one side of the road. Farra had been walking there; she lowered her ears and hissed as the horse crowded her. This spooked the horse, which veered in the opposite direction.

"Steady on!" Diarmán said, clenching his sore muscles in an effort to stay reasonably upright. Up ahead, Uachi had drawn his sturdy mount to a stop and turned in his saddle. He draped one arm casually along his thigh, watching Diarmán with obvious amusement.

"I do not have warts," Diarmán said crisply, "but I should not have expected a metaphor to be within the bounds of your limited comprehension, you muscle-brained buffoon." He wrestled for control of his horse, a task that was considerably more difficult than it should have been when a man was in a huff.

Uachi scratched the side of his nose and said, "How long are you going to spend prancing about here? Will you be finished before sundown?"

Diarmán nudged his horse into a trot, catching back up to Uachi. "You came all this way just for the pleasure of verbally abusing me. There can be no other reason. You aren't staying at my castle."

"Oh, it's a castle now, is it?" The ranger cocked a brow as he straightened, his horse easing naturally into a walk again.

"It is a castle. Of course it's a castle. What would you call a castle-shaped building aside from a castle?"

"Maybe I'd prefer to sleep under the stars, your lord-and-lilyship. Saves me choking to death on the dust wafting out of the curtains in the guest's chambers. Or being eaten alive by lice."

At last, Diarmán laughed. "You're a bastard."

Uachi was a man who could insult or tease with a face as straight as an arrow, but he finally cracked a smile now. "Being eaten alive by lice would at least be better than being eaten by your sweet grandfather."

"Now that's a real possibility. Be wary if anybody invites you down to the kitchens; it might be a ploy to get you into a pie. We'll find one of your fingers stuck in his beard after dinner, all greasy with gravy." Diarmán smirked, relaxing into the banter.

Trading barbs and insults was familiar. Comfortable, even, for a pair of companions as strangely matched as Diarmán of House Eldran and Uachi u Rora of Penrua. They had met by chance as solitary travelers and had been drawn together by the common threads in their paths: Uachi had been seeking a lost child, and Diarmán had been determined to save his family from ruin. Those goals had taken them to the same place, entwining their individual adventures with the destiny of an empire.

They had soon enough found themselves tracking armies, kidnapping princesses—plural!—and traveling the world together. More or less.

Then it had been over. And while it had made perfect sense for Uachi to travel back to the capitol of Penrua—he was, after all, Emperor Matei's oldest friend—Diarmán had had no reason to go with him to the heart of an empire he despised.

And yet he had.

What were they to one another now, Diarmán wondered? Friends, perhaps. It was the simplest definition. Traveling companions might be safer still. Yet Diarmán could not forget one breathless kiss by moonlight...a kiss Uachi had stolen. Nor could he forget his own confused, foolish confession of love. He had spilled his stupid heart all over Uachi's shoes.

But they had not talked about it. Diarmán had tried, but Uachi had rebuffed him. He didn't want to talk about whatever it was between them—perhaps was not able to.

And so it was. They'd been friends. They were friends now, and it was likely they always would be.

Diarmán didn't blame Uachi. What did he have to offer, aside from a troubled family and a couple of fields of dirt?

Besides, Uachi had only recently lost his wife, a woman he'd truly loved. She had betrayed him, but it did not mean he didn't grieve. She had met a grisly, brutal end, and Diarmán knew Uachi carried a weight of guilt in his heart.

If only he hadn't been born a wreck of a romantic, he might have been able to forget his desires. Had their story been meant to turn into a grand romance, surely it would have by now.

Alas: although Diarmán had inherited all the good sense and all of the good looks in his family, he'd also gotten the fool-heartedness. One must take the bad with the good. That was his resigned philosophy. So on he'd trudge through the shadowed vale of unrequited—

"Don't go hazy-eyed and pensive on me," said Uachi.

"Hmm?"

"Hmm, yourself."

Diarmán glanced at his companion—his friend—then looked ahead again, pressing his lips together. After a beat of silence, he said, "I do not know what we will find when we arrive."

"It doesn't much matter. We have Matei's fancy letter."

"I think it's called a proclamation."

"He scribbled on a bit of paper and fussed it up with a seal. It's a fancy letter. We can hardly even say it's from him, since one of his lackeys wrote it. Perhaps we can credit him with the signature, but that's about all."

"Whatever you call it, it is just a bit of paper from an emperor that Narr has never liked. And if my grandfather catches wind that we've got Matei's support, my brothers and I, I think he'd tear the thing up and burn it."

"Then we won't let on that we have it at all. The main concern is securing your family's place in the event of your grandfather's death. Whether he lives for a year or for twenty—"

"Gods below, Uachi, don't scare me—"

"—you'll be ready to step in and take control. Matei has the Narrian princesses as wards of the state."

"Yes, yes, lest Coratse cast a covetous eye upon her countrymen's holdings again, et cetera."

"And one of his conditions for Narrian independence—"

"I know, Uachi, but what does all of it amount to? The support of an emperor who's no longer even our emperor?"

"And a bloody powerful man."

"Who cannot care all that much about my family's little dirt patch. He's got many important matters to worry about, like which color to wear to his third fancy supper of the evening."

Uachi snorted, which was his version of a laugh. He shook his head. "He is a man of his word, Diarmán. You should know that about him by now, no matter what you think of him. And he doesn't like fancy suppers, either."

"Uh huh. And I think you're simply blinded by love."

Uachi cast Diarmán an unamused look. After frequent teasings about his affection for Matei, he had stopped rising to the bait. He liked and he trusted Matei, that was all, and he believed that their frilly proclamation would make a difference.

It didn't mean Diarmán had to believe it.

But, damn it all, it was hard not to hope.