We had enemies, but they weren't in the house with us. Not in Chalphy, anyway... I can't speak for other households. [Certainly when her father had befriended Prince Kurth, trouble had followed. But from the people with them everyday? The servants, the soldiers, young cousin Oifey, they were all trusted implicity. And none of them had ever transgressed in anything more than a normal way that sometimes happens in a big household.] When I married and moved to Leonster, I had to learn to be more careful. With a dangerous enemy on the southern border, we had to have more guards, inside and outside... and take more care with food and drink.

[It had been a bit of a learning curve. And while cloak-and-dagger was not usually the Thracian way, the resentful and desperate citizens there sometimes compromised their principles. Sometimes lords on the southern border did get attacked in the marketplace, sometimes the new maid with the southerly accent slipped something into the wine or made away with the family jewels.]