It was deep night, and if Pallian had been asleep he would have awakened badly. He never slept in his armor; it didn't let him. Instead, he lay on the floor of Ravaj's tent in a sort of trance, knowing that Ravaj had covered him in spells to prevent him from being in seen -- magically or otherwise. So when Ravaj swept the curtain aside and entered the tent ahead of four guards pulling a struggling figure dressed entirely in black, he managed to return to consciousness and attention without giving any outward sign.
"Well then, my saboteur," said Ravaj. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
The figure didn't answer, and Ravaj frowned. "We'll have a look at your face, at least," he said, and reached for the cloth hood that covered the prisoner's head.
His hand passed through hood, face, and skull, and suddenly he was staggering back, gaping at the blade in his chest. The troopers who had been hauling the prisoner along shuddered back as the masked figure spun, more graceful than any dancer, cutting into them with barely-seen blades. They fell.
"Not saboteur," said the prisoner, in a woman's voice that was rich with laughter. "Assassin." She turned, raising a curved knife so heavily enchanted that it drank the light of the lamps away and looked like a hole cut in the world. She was moving to stab Ravaj with it when Pallian came up, drawing his blade as he rose and sweeping it up into a cut designed to remove her arm.
She flickered back in a way that shouldn't have been possible, then paused at the side of the tent, considering his sword and her dagger. "Oh, well done," she said, and laughed again. "But can you catch me?" The lamps went dark as she dove out tent's door.
In his armor, the darkness didn't inconvenience Pallian at all. The dagger in his brother's chest, however, did. As the Champion of Teregor, he could hardly let the Crown Prince die. The troopers were dead; they were probably lucky that Ravaj had brought the prisoner here to question privately, or they might have lost some officers as well. They still might, with the assassin loose in the camp.
With a frustrated grunt, Pallian gathered his brother in his arms and stepped out of the tent.
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