A Marriage of Swords
The King watched, his expression unreadable.
“The Serpent’s Spine,” Leigh said, pointing to a jagged, inland mountain range that ran parallel to the strait. “Here. The mountains drop to the sea in cliffs, yes. But there are old paths. Goat-herder paths, smugglers’ routes. My... my tutor once spoke of them. He was a traveler.” The lie came easily, a cover for the knowledge gained from intercepting coastal intelligence reports meant for her father. “There is one path, here, that leads down to a sea-cave. It emerges behind the largest of the likely coves, the one called the Serpent’s Maw.”
The admiral stared. “The Maw is inaccessible from land. We’ve surveyed it.”