This is just a little oneshot about Tamazin and Silk's father. I always wondered exactly how they got together, and how Silk's father felt about 'betraying' his wife, especially since a few little details hint that she had already caught the illness that disfigured her.

Khendas is Kheldar's father. Hymlia is the head of Drasnian Intelligence before Javelin. Mhanelle is Silk's mother. I think that's it for OCs/nameless minor characters I had to name. Enjoy!

PICKING LOCKS

"'You aren't bolstering my ego much, Kheldar. I'm here because a Drasnian gentleman liked to pick locks.'"
—Urgit, King of the Murgos, page 323

As Khendas delivered the trade delegation to Taur Urgas, the obviously crazy Murgo King, from his brother, the young King Rhodar of Drasnia, his eyes moved constantly, taking in his surroundings. Rak Goska was not an attractive city, he had noticed on the way in. The people were Murgos; their men were brutal and grim-faced, and their women were kept indoors at all times.

But today, intoning empty words pertaining to the trade relations between Drasnia and Cthol Murgos, Khendas was treated to a rare sight. Hiding in the curtains, surrounded by armed guards, was a beautiful young Murgo woman. Her dark, slanted eyes more almond-shaped than the Murgo men he had seen, and he was taken by her olive-colored skin and lustrous, silky black hair.

That hair... it was the same color as Mhanelle's.

Khendas shoved the thought of Mhanelle and her beauty, her unusual dark hair, her pale skin, her sparkling eyes, to the back of his mind. Guilt gnawed at him, the guilt of a man who has left his wife during a difficult time. He shouldn't have taken this job for Rhodar and Hymlia. Even if he was one of the kingdom's best spies, even if the job he had to to do here was vital to the national security of Drasnia, he should have stayed home with his eight-year-old son, Kheldar, and his sick wife, Mhanelle.

But he was in Rak Goska now, not at home in Boktor. Mhanelle would be fine. She would recover.

When he finished reading the paper to the glassy-eyed Murgo King and worked up the courage to glance back to where the Murgo lady had been hiding, she was gone.

As Tamazin was escorted back to her rooms by Oskatat and his guards, she felt giddy. The Drasnian envoy had seen her! He had looked at her!

It was rare that any Murgo man saw another man's wife uninvited, let alone a foreigner. Oskatat, who had a soft spot for her, often let her eavesdrop on Taur Urgas's court, but this was the first time anyone had noticed her. How had this man seen what so many others had missed?

Tamazin had once heard that Drasnia's national industry was espionage—spying. She wondered if that was true, and that the handsome envoy was really a spy. She almost asked Oskatat, but then remembered that she was not back at Rak Hagga, where her kind father would let her roam the house and ask questions freely. In Rak Goska, women were not allowed to ask questions. They were not even allowed to be seen.

But still, who was that man? He was, she admitted, handsome, and she had sensed a quick wit when he had looked at her. His long, beaklike nose, was not unattractive, but rather made him look like an eagle.

Tamazin barely noticed when they arrived at her rooms, she was so caught up in thought. She drifted over to the chair next to her small window looking into the garden and stared dreamily into the sunshine for nearly two hours, thinking rebellious thoughts of freedom, spies, eagles, and the Drasnian envoy who had noticed her.

Khendas could not get the Murgo woman off his mind, which made his guilt at leaving Mhanelle even worse. At the public dinner that night, he played the foreign fool, inquiring about every aspect of Murgo culture, the women included. The Murgos for the most part were very tight lipped and proper, but he did glean a few juicy bits of information to report back to Feather, or Hymlia, as he knew her, the head of Drasnian Intelligence.

He also learned that the heavily guarded women's quarters were in the east wing of the palace.

The servant who had revealed this to him, admittedly inadvertently as he muttered to another servant about cleaning the women's quarters, had mentioned something about getting past the guards and needing keys to enter. This sparked Khendas's curiosity, and almost seemed a challenge. And, admittedly, he was very curious about the lady he had seen in Taur Urgas's court today.

He finished dinner early and said a formal goodnight to the King and the nobles gathered. Then he began to wander. He first went to the King's private meeting rooms, searching for the map Rhodar and Feather had asked him to steal. It was easier than Khendas had thought it would be. The third meeting room contained what he was looking for.

Khendas spent the next half hour trying to convince himself that what he planned to do was wrong, and the half hour after that trying to justify that it would be fine.

Eventually, overcome by curiosity, guilt, and stress, Khendas found himself in the east wing of the palace.

Picking the lock and undoing the bolt on the guarded door was ridiculously easy once he had sent the bored guards on a wild goose chase for a runaway slave. The guards were so stupid, and the lock so simple, that it was almost an insult to his intelligence, and a disappointing challenge.

It only took Khendas two minutes to find the right door. He had snooped around the women's banqueting room, disguised as a servant, and had noted the pleasant smell of blackberry-and-lilac perfume hanging heavily on the Murgo woman's person. He let his sharp nose that had earned him the nickname "Eagle" by the Drasnian Intelligence Service guide him to the correct room.

Once again, Khendas picked the simple lock and slipped into the Lady's room to wait.

Tamazin had left for dinner in a hurry, hastily throwing on state clothes and a fancy gown. She had perhaps overdosed on her favorite blackberry-and-lilac perfume, something Taur Urgas's third wife, a snotty beauty from the House of Cthaka, had snidely remarked on to the other noblewomen.

She ate quickly, but stayed at the table to spite the others. In the Royal Palace, it was always wise to stay at the table longer than was strictly necessary. It provided more opportunity to insult and degrade and spread poisonous gossip under the pretense of polite dinner conversation.

Tamazin finally could not stand the fake smiles and false compliments. She excused herself from the table and bid goodnight to the vicious women gathered for dinner.

She made her way back to her bedroom. The guards of the women's quarters looked cross and sweaty, but Tamazin did not pause to wonder why. The day's events—the envoy noticing her, the palace gossip, the rush to get to dinner—had exhausted her, and all she wanted to do was collapse on her soft bed.

She fished the key out of the folds of her dress and turned the lock. She quietly closed the door and locked it, then fiddled with the string holding her gown together in preparation to disrobe.

Then she froze. There was someone else in her room.

Slowly, Tamazin turned.

Lying in her bed, looking quite comfortable and at home, was the Drasnian envoy

The look on the Lady's face was priceless. Khendas was a merchant as well as a spy and a trade envoy, and he knew about that sort of thing.

She quickly backed up to her door and scrambled for the lock before he said, "Don't worry, Lady. I won't hurt you."

"How did you get in here?" she asked, stunned. Khendas was overcome by another wave of guilt as he listened to her light and musical voice. Aside from her sharp, angular features and the accusatory tone in her voice, the Murgo noblewoman could have been Mhanelle's sister.

"Oh, I picked the lock," he answered casually. "Really, it was easy."

"But—the guards!" the Lady protested.

Khendas snorted. "Those idiots? Please. One word about a runaway slave and they were happy to leave their posts."

The Lady had found the doorknob and was clutching it with her back to the door, but she made no attempt to escape. "Why are you here?" she asked finally.

Multiple possible answers jostled through his mind. Some were even the truth.

"Because you interest me, Lady," he settled on. It wasn't even a lie. "What is your name?"

"Lady Tamazin of the House of Hagga," she answered automatically. "And you?"

He ignored her question. "I think I recognize your name... Are you one of Taur Urgas's wives?" he inquired.

She lowered her gaze. "His second," she said in a quiet voice. She sounded almost ashamed.

Khendas nodded. "To answer your earlier question, I am Prince Khendas of Drasnia, brother to His Majesty, King Rhodar, Lord of the Marches of the North." He grinned crookedly. "Also a merchant, a vagabond, and—"

"A spy?" Tamazin blurted out, eyes alight with curiosity. Khendas noticed, with interest, that the Lady had relaxed her grip on the doorknob.

"Of course," he replied, modestly adding, "one of Drasnia's finest."

Tamazin let go of the doorknob altogether and took a small step forward, asking, "Are women allowed to be seen in Drasnia? May they ask questions?"

Khenads blinked, surprised, and replied, "Yes, of course." He cracked a slight smile. "My wife, Mhanelle, is very outspoken." Instantly, at the mention of Mhanelle, he felt guilty. What was he doing, flirting with this Murgo woman when the Alorn love of his life was suffering from the illness that had killed his father only two months before?

But Tamazin seemed enraptured. "You're married?" she asked with something like disappointment in her voice.

"Yes," he admitted. "I have a son, Kheldar, as well." He had messed things up. The Lady, Tamazinn, was drawing away. He had ruined his chance.

Chance? he asked himself. What chance? You need to be faithful to Mhanelle!

But still...

"You should probably leave," Tamazin said softly. "You should not have come in the first place."

Khendas nodded, and rose from the Lady's bed. Tamazin moved away from the door, but Khendas moved toward the window instead. He climbed up the windowsill, but paused before exiting. Something inside him urged him to try one more time.

"Tamazin," he began, saying the Lady's name for the first time, "would you like me to come back tomorrow night?"

She paused, her expression showing indecision.

At last, she answered, in a very soft tone, "Yes, Khendas. I think I would like that very much."

Then he slipped out of her room, landing in the palace gardens, a silly grin on his face.

Khendas stayed in Rak Goska for twelve days. Each night, he paid Tamazin a visit. By the fifth night, Tamazin admitted to herself that she was in love, and paid him a kiss good night. By the seventh night, things had gone a little past kissing.

She knew Khendas felt guilty for leaving his wife, the lucky Mhanelle, when she was sick, and guiltier still for falling in love with Tamazin. She tried her best to reassure him and distract him.

And while she knew all the while that her Drasnian prince could not stay, she still cried when he left.

The trade delegation was successful, and the real reason Khendas was there even more so. He had stolen the map and received all the information he needed from Tamazin. Sometimes, in the dark of night after her prince had left and her one ray of light in this dark palace was gone, she wondered whether that was the only reason he had come to her—for information.

But then she remembered how he had spoke to her about the love he didn't want to feel for her, the guilt and anguish in his voice, and she banished thoughts such as those.

She watched, secretly, from the top of the palace as the Drasnian envoy and his guards left. Was it her imagination, or did Khendas look back and wink at her, just before he turned the corner and out of sight?

Tamazin never saw him again.

It was not long after that Tamazin realized she was pregnant. It was not until months later that she discovered who her son's father was.

She had hoped in her heart for all her long pregnancy that Taur Urgas was not this child's father, that Khendas, her Drasnian prince, was instead. And when her son, the precious child that Taur Urgas named Urgit, was born, she saw the truth.

This little baby had few of the traits that would have marked him a full-blood Murgo. His features were not angular, and his hair was not quite dark enough to be Angarak. But the thing that really made Tamazin believe that Urgit was not the son of Taur Urgas was his nose. The long, twitching nose on her baby looked exactly as Khendas's had, though it made her son look more like a rat than an eagle.

She watched her son grow up, always afraid of the possibility that he would be killed in the scramble for the throne. She hoped against hope that her half-Drasnian son that looked so much like her prince would survive, and become king. She tried, when he was young, to give him a conscience, and intelligence. She thought she was successful.

And, in what seemed like an impossible stroke of luck, when Taur Urgas was killed on the battlefield, her son, Urgit, was Heir Apparent! The remaining sons of her husband were all systematically killed, and Urgit was crowned King. Tamazin thought her troubles were over. She thought that now, surely, her son would be safe.

And then her hopes were dashed when Zakath declared war on the blood of Taur Urgas. Her secret, the secret that would earlier have gotten both her and her son killed, was now threatening to destroy Cthol Murgos and kill thousands of people in a bloody, unreasonable war for naught.

And when all hope seemed to be lost, and Urgit was wallowing in pity, a King without a backbone, came a man who looked exactly like Khendas—her prince's other son, Prince Kheldar. The one who had killed Dorak Urgas, the former Heir Apparent. And with him, this time, was a woman who had the shrewdness and audacity to discover Tamazin's secret, and reveal the secrets of many others, as well.