“It seems I have pierced two impiters with a single shaft. I came to haggle for corths from that fat corthman Nath, and now I find the pleasure of meeting you, Dray Prescot. I had planned a more formal meeting, for I fear I have not thanked you enough for saving the miserable skin of my foolish nephew.”
Against that kind of polite nonsense, a plain sea officer and a fighting-man is usually out of his depth. I merely bowed again and said: “The pleasure is mine, I assure you.”
How long the inanities would have gone I do not know. This Queen Lilah stood very tall, her dark eyes on a level with my own brown ones, and her red hair had been coiffed into a high pile resplendent with gems and strings of pearls. Her dark blue gown, thickly embroidered and stiff with bullion and gold and silver th
