Free Law of the Broken Earth by Rachel Neumeier

true—this is a Linularinan saying—that the politest smile still contains teeth. You can’t guess whether a man is your friend or not by whether he smiles at you.”
    “They sound very different from us,” Mienthe said doubtfully. She wondered if this could actually be true. Though she’d heard that saying.
    “In some ways. And in other ways, that perhaps matter more, they aren’t different at all.”
    Mienthe nodded. She was even more certain now that he had loved Linularinum. She looked for something to say that might ease his sense of loss, but couldn’t think of anything. Probably a Linularinan woman would be able to think of something subtle and obscure and, what had he said? Flowery. Something subtle and obscure andflowery to make him feel better. She didn’t seem to be as clever as a Linularinan woman. She said merely, which was true but neither subtle nor clever, “I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t suppose you’ll have a chance to go back to Teramondian now.”
    Tan said after a moment, “It was bound to come to this eventually. That it was
that
day, right then, when all the pieces suddenly fell into order… Well, the years do shatter in our hands, and cut us to the bone if we try to hold them.”
    Mienthe could not imagine wanting to hold on to the past. Then she thought of Tef, and after all understood exactly what Tan meant. Erich, too, nodded.
    “So tell me how I came to be so fortunate as to find Iaor here before me,” Tan said to him, deliberately breaking the moment.
    Erich shrugged. “
His Majesty
,” he said with some emphasis, “likes to see his country. And he likes to leave the cold heights and come down to the Delta before the heat of summer.”
    “Eminently sensible,” murmured Tan, with a quirk of one eyebrow.
    “I’ve always thought so,” Erich agreed with a grin. “We chase the spring, and by the time we reach Tiearanan, we find the ice gone from the mountains and the flowers blooming.”
    “Yes, but it’s more than that,” Mienthe put in, “because they say His Majesty never guested in the Delta until Bertaud came back. Everything—” She stopped abruptly, having come surprisingly close to adding,
Everything changed when my cousin came home
. How strange that she should have begun to say something so personal.
    “The Fox never leaves Teramondian, I think. I think perhaps I prefer His Majesty’s”—and here Tan lifted a wry eyebrow at Erich, who grinned back—“inclination to see the whole of his country.”
    Mienthe nodded. “From here, King Iaor takes his household along the coast to Terabiand, then back north along the Nejeied River to the summer court in Tiearanan.”
    “Lingering in Terabiand if there are any reports of late snows in the mountains,” put in Erich.
    “Yes, so the whole progress takes about two months, sometimes more, doesn’t it, Erich? I’ve always wanted to go along… My cousin doesn’t want to spend so long away from the Delta, I suppose,” Mienthe added a little doubtfully.
    “He doesn’t care to travel?”
    “Oh, before, he went everywhere in Feierabiand, I think,” she said. “And to—”
Casmantium
, she had meant to say, but that had been after Casmantium had tried to annex part of Feierabiand, when her cousin had escorted Erich from his father’s court to Iaor’s and she didn’t want to say that. She said instead, “I think he likes to stay closer to home, now.”
    “Of course,” Tan murmured.
    Mienthe realized suddenly that Tan really had known about the progress, but had simply wanted to get them talking freely. And she had—much more than usual. She gave him a narrow look, wondering whether to laugh or be angry. “You’re very good at that, aren’t you? I think I understand why you’re such a good spy. Confidential agent, I mean.”
    Tan looked surprised. Then he laughed and opened hishands in a gesture of contrition. “Habit,” he said apologetically. “One I’ll have to break, now I’m no longer