"Yes ma'am." She saw Celaena's cold stare and assumed it was directed at them. She pulled Silly and Ame closer to her; only then did she realize that Ame was crying, hiccupping and sobbing, and Silly was giggling uncontrollably. She knelt down between them.
"Oh, dear. Ame, Ame, sweetie, look at me. What's the matter, sweetie?" She wrapped Ame in her arms. The girl was terribly warm, almost feverish.
"I-I I killded a man a'c-cause he s-s-scareded me. I j-j-j-jus' l-l-looked at h-him an' -- an' he g-gasped l-like I were ch-chokin' him, on'y, I ne'er t-t-touched him, I-i swear it! a-an, an' then he f-fell-fell over an' died!" Then her diction slipped entirely and she wrapped her arms around Aery's neck and started sobbing.
Aery held her, tears filling her own eyes. [i]I should have never brought them here. Silly, sure, but never Ame.[/i]
Apparently, Ame had cried herself out pretty thoroughly, and was now asleep over Aery's shoulder. So then the older girl turned to Silly. "What about you, Silly? Are you okay?"
Silly was laughing so hard at whatever that it took her a minute to answer; and she still thought she had to act like a princess. "Oh, me? I'm grand! I think I must have stabbed at least twenty men, and I'm covered in blood, and I don't know why ever you should think something was wrong with me, because I'm having a grand time at this!"
Aery frowned, reached out, and plucked the knives from Silly's bloody hands.
"You don't get these back until you can prove to me you're not a psychopathic murderer. You ought to feel at least a little something, maybe a quiet respect, not this psychotic laughter." For Aery, while she didn't display any emotions, felt a deep respect for the men she'd killed. There was something grand about their deaths, almost like a sacrifice to help her rise to the bloodstained dais of the Court of Assassins.
Instantly Silly quieted. Maybe the knives had just been exciting her. "I really killed a lot of men, didn't I?" She asked, softly. "I really did." She started scrubbing her hands on her bloody dress, like she was trying to get the blood off of them.
"It's okay, Silly. They wanted to kill us" or torture us and beat us and rape us and use us to their own twisted ends, but of course she wouldn't say that. "and we just killed them first. It was in self-defense."
Looking up at Celaena, Aery murmured, "I don't suppose you can help me calm them down, my lady, can you?"