He just followed the lack of noise while he walked.
And after due consideration, guided in no small measure by the fact that, while he had been raised by aunts, those aunts had given him most of his early training in fighting, he thought he had a good idea. And when Siegfried spotted the Princess alone except for her guards in an obscure hallway, he decided he was going to see if he couldn't give her something new to think about, as well.
The only reason he was here was because this hall was on the most shaded side of the Palace, for it led to a portrait gallery, and portraits were notorious for fading in sunlight. That meant it was cool — a good place for pacing. She was passing by the stairs going up to the gallery. He wasn't at all sure why she was there, but he was going to take advantage of it.
He bounded down the stairs and intercepted her, bowing comically, since he knew he couldn't do so gracefully. Her two guards first looked startled, then relaxed when they saw who it was. "Princess Rosamund!" he exclaimed. "Are you busy?"
She gave him an odd look and a raised eyebrow at his casual manner. Desmond was always formal, so Siegfried had decided to be the opposite. "I'm always busy," she replied warily. "Do you need something?"
"Some of your time." He looked the guards over for a moment. Stout fellows, yes, but from the way they stood — they'd had nothing but standard training. And they were woefully relaxed in his presence. That was a mistake. "Well let me — "
Just as he had been taught, he went from an unthreatening stance to a blur of action in the blink of an eye. The only thing that slowed him down was knowing that he didn't want to do anything permanent to either of these boys. He could, all too easily, leave them with broken bones or worse if he wasn't careful. A sweep of the leg knocked the feet of the one nearest him right out from under him so that he fell heavily to the ground, and a follow-up kick to the chin took him out.
" — show you — "
He grabbed the first one's pike — a stupid weapon in a hallway! — and rushed the second, pinning his arms to the wall with it at the elbows. Now he couldn't reach Siegfried or his weapons. Bar-fighting tactics, yes, but also the no-moves-barred style of his own people.
" — what I mean."
He felt the Princess behind him, and wondered if she was staring at him in shock.
"Now if this'd been a real attack on you, this lad would've been laid on the ground, too. Hit to his head with my forehead, then a knee to the stomach and then a kick to the groin, he'd be on the floor and you'd be unprotected." He stared into the stunned and angry eyes of his victim, and tried to convey that he was rather sorry he'd done this but also not at all sorry, because these fellows were supposed to be protecting Rosamund, not making themselves victims.
"Not quite unprotected, I think," came the cold reply right behind him, and he felt the prick of a knife at his kidneys. He grinned.
"Good!" he said. Then he snaked his arm around, grabbed the side of her hand and twisted. The knife fell to the floor and she gasped a little, though he had tried to be careful. "I'm fair glad that you know to defend yourself. But I want to teach you how to be better."
He let go of her and her Guardsman at the same time, and jumped back out of immediate range of a punch or a weapon. The man instantly started to draw his sword, but Rosamund stopped him with an outstretched hand.
"No," she said. "I don't think Siegfried had any intentions of doing anything other than giving us a very pointed lesson. If he'd meant any mischief, you two would be dead, and I would be dead or on a horse by now." She massaged her wrist gingerly. "You have a strange way of trying to impress a woman, Prince Siegfried."
He shrugged. "I'm not trying to impress you." Then he grinned sheepishly. "Or — all right, I am trying to impress you, but I'm not trying to impress you like the others are. I wanted to make sure you could see that I know what I'm doing, and that you and these good fellows aren't really prepared to deal with a nasty scoundrel with no compunctions about anything. We both know it's not going to do me any good if something happens to you before this contest is over. So can I show you some low fighting tricks that a Captain of the Guard won't teach you?" He glanced at the red-faced Guardsman, and the one on the ground, who was starting to sit up, shaking his head and feeling his chin. "All three of you?"
The Princess eyed him for a moment, giving him the first really measuring look that he had gotten from her, then nodded. "All right. You may. I have a bit of time that I can spare, and it is clear it will be time well invested. Let me go and change, and I will send someone for you here."
He waited patiently, and in what he had come to think was a remarkably short period of time for a woman, a servant came to fetch him. The servant brought him to a room he recognized as a wealthy man's toy, a place indoors meant to practice sword work. Only a very, very wealthy person could afford a room with absolutely nothing in it but a pile of thick pads in one corner. Only the amazingly wealthy could afford the walls of mirrors. Or the multicandled things that lowered down from the ceiling to shed an even light at night. The Princess was waiting for him, with four guards this time; she was very sensibly dressed in buff-colored breeches and a linen tunic, a pair of sturdy boots, and with her hair braided up and pinned to her head.
The surprise was that the Godmother, in her guise of the Queen, was also there. She looked shockingly out of place in this very purposed room, in her elaborate black gown of the finest of silk and knitted lace. He grinned, and bowed. He decided on the spur of the moment that now was the time to let her know what he knew. He walked up to her, where she stood apart from the rest. "Hello, Godmother," he said cheerfully, in a voice too low to carry to the guards. She probably did not want them to know what she was, and she wouldn't thank him for letting the secret out of the bag.
The woman's eyes widened, but she gave no other indication that he had surprised her. Instead, she granted him a slow smile. Good. She wasn't angry. It wasn't wise to anger a Godmother. Anyone who could casually distribute cursed objects the way she had was someone he did not want to cross.
"And if I say that you are smarter than you look?"
"I'll thank you for it. Do you need any lessons?" he asked, with an inviting tilt of the head.
"Not really. I have magic." She flexed her fingers, and little crackles of lightning ran across the back of her knuckles. "But I am very interested in what you can show Rosa."
He nodded, and becoming all business, he turned back to face the waiting young woman and her entourage. "Then let us begin with the most common way someone is likely to attack the Princess. When she is alone, because she is in a great hurry, and in a passage she thinks is safe."
Rosa was not, and never had been, what anyone would consider fragile. She had gotten her share of bruises learning to handle sheep, she had fallen from jumping horses, she had gotten burns learning to cook over a hearth fire. But today she had learned that she was not nearly as hardy as she had thought that she was, and rather than making her feel frustrated, angry or afraid, the realization filled her with elation, because it meant that Siegfried was not holding back with her. He respected her enough and, for whatever selfish or unselfish reasons, wanted to see she was good enough to protect herself. If teaching her that meant that she got hurt, well, that was the cost of knowledge. She had known all her life that nothing in life came without a cost. She would far rather have a bruise now than face the Huntsman again and be unable to stop him or run from him.