The Princess keeps her knives sharp. She’s been caring for her own knives since she was nine. Her mother says the Princess was a late bloomer.
The knife dealer watches the Princess walk past his shop, and he thinks of marriage. But a princess doesn’t marry a dealer of any kind. This Princess is even better at shining up a knife than he has ever been. He keeps his eye on her anyway. The Prince, after all, is dead.
And, as the knife dealer has no doubt heard, dead from what could have been knife wounds. Heh. Just the right level of implicit menace!