Free The Unwilling Warlord by Lawrence Watt-Evans

speaking Semmat, and nodded approvingly. “I can understand that,” he said. “I must seem . . . um . . . I must be like . . . I guess you haven’t.” His Semmat vocabulary had failed him again. He hastened to cover over his slip. “I never met a princess before.”
    “No?”
    He shook his head. “No,” he said.
    “Not even back in Ethshar?”
    “Not even in Ethshar. There’s only one princess in all of Ethshar of the Spices, and I never met her.”
    Actually, technically, there were no “princesses” at all, but Azrad VII’s sister, Imra the Unfortunate, was a reasonably close approximation. Sterren had no idea what her correct title would be in Semmat; in Ethsharitic she was simply Lady Imra.
    “Oh, we have lots of princesses here!” Lura announced proudly. “There’s me, of course, and my sisters — Ashassa doesn’t live here any more, she’s in Kalithon with her husband Prince Tabar, but there’s Nissitha and Shirrin, still. And there’s my Aunt Sanda. That’s four of us, not counting Ashassa.”
    Sterren nodded. “Four’s a good number, I guess,” he said, smiling foolishly.
    Lura’s expression suddenly turned suspicious. “I’m not a baby, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to play along with me.”
    “I’m sorry,” Sterren said, dropping the false smile, “I didn’t mean to . . . to do as if you were a baby. Um . . . how old are you?” He looked a little more closely at her face. He could not tell her age with any certainty, but he noticed a resemblance to her father, the king.
    “Seven,” she said. “I’ll be eight in Icebound. The ninth of Icebound.”
    “I was born on the eighth of Thaw, myself,” Sterren said.
    Lura nodded, and another awkward silence fell. The two of them stood there, looking at each other or glancing around the room, until Sterren, desperately, said, “So you just wanted to meet me because I’m from Eth­shar?”
    “Well, mostly. And you are the new warlord, so I guess you’re important. Everybody else wants to meet you, too, but they didn’t come up here, I did. My sister Shirrin was scared to, and Nissitha says she doesn’t have time for such foolishness, but she’s just trying to act grown-up. She’s twenty-one and not even betrothed yet, so I don’t know why she’s so proud of herself!”
    Sterren nodded. Lura obviously loved to talk — another resemblance to her father, he thought. He wondered if he had finally found someone who would tell him everything he wanted to know about Semma Castle and its inhabitants; certainly, Lura wasn’t reticent.
    On the other hand, how much would she actually know? Gossip about her sisters was one thing; a warlord’s duties were quite another.
    “Are you really a warlord?” she asked, breaking his chain of thought.
    “So they tell me,” he said.
    “Have you killed a lot of people?”
    Sterren shuddered. “I’ve never killed anyone,” he said, emphatically.
    “Oh.” Lura was clearly disappointed by this revelation. She did not let that slow her for long, however.
    “What’s it like in Ethshar?” she asked.
    Involuntarily, Sterren glanced out the broad windows at the endless plains to the north. “Crowded,” he said. He pointed out the window. “Imagine,” he said, “that you were on the top of the tower at Westgate, looking east across the city. The eastern wall would be halfway to the . . . to where the sun comes up, and everything in between would be streets and shops and houses, all crowded inside the walls.” He didn’t know any word for “horizon,” and hoped Lura would understand what he meant.
    Lura looked out the window, and asked, “What about farms?”
    “Outside the walls, never inside.”
    She looked skeptical, and he saw no point in arguing about it. “You asked,” he said with a shrug.
    She shrugged in reply. “You’re right,” she said, “I did. When are you coming downstairs? Everybody’s waiting to meet you.”
    “They are?”
    “Well, of course