Karris felt numb. She read the letter again, and wondered at herself. How had she believed such preposterous lies in the first place? On the night they were to elope, Dazen had sneaked around her family’s estate and chained every door shut and then set the place afire? Or he’d arrived with a dozen men to do the same task-men who had never been found or mentioned again, after Gavin got the armies marching after his brother?
No, this made much more sense. Why else had her father insisted on getting Karris out of the city that very night? Because he knew about the trap his sons had planned, perhaps that he had helped them plan.
And then when it went bad, her father had gladly covered up his sons’ murderous guilt in the deaths of everyone at the estate, and had done so with Andross Guile’s complicity, because it rallied the other noble families around Andross’s favored son Gavin. It had been a conspiracy, just not the one Karris had always thought.
The drums of war had started pounding, and Karris, young and weak, had simply believed that her elders must know things she didn’t. Things that made the war inevitable, that made Dazen’s guilt indisputable.
Since then, Karris had always struggled to bring together the two Gavins she’d known: the one who’d been betrothed to her but then used her cruelly and cast her off like she was garbage, and the later one who broke their betrothal and her heart but then treated her kindly. The inexplicability was what had twisted her into knots: if she’d known Gavin was a cruel cad, she could have written off her infatuation as the stupidity of a young girl deluded by a man’s good looks and charm and power. It was the parts of his character that seemed totally contradictory that kept her in limbo.
And now, instead of the hard revelations prompting gales of tears at years lost and lies believed, Karris felt relieved. At peace.
She took each page of the letter and held it over a candle. Each burned in a flash.
Karris grinned at that. Fire paper. Lady Guile might have trusted her, but that didn’t mean she wanted the letter to be hard to destroy.
Dazen loved her. Dazen had always loved her. And he was holding terrible secrets. Alone. His respect for her, his love for her, had made him keep her nearby. It had made a thousand hard tasks harder for him. If he’d wanted, he could have had her cast out of the Blackguard easily. He could have had her imprisoned. He had never taken the easy way out, not where she was concerned.
She stood, feeling lighter than she had in sixteen years, and walked to the door. Samite was standing there, waiting for her. She had her hands behind her back, as if hiding something.
Samite said, “Lady Guile said that after you read that note, you’d have need of some serious firepower, one way or the other.” She brought her hands out from behind her back. In one hand was a large old pistol. In the other was a painfully beautiful lace chemise and a matching corset with short stays that would cost a Blackguard a year’s wages. “So which is it going to be?”
Karris stared openmouthed. Lady Guile! Scandalous! And Sami was holding that up in the middle of the barracks, for Orholam’s sake! “Who’s on Prism duty tonight?”
“Think it’s some of the new boys.”
“Perfect,” Karris said. She grinned.
“Karris, what are you…” Samite said.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me with my hair?”
Chapter 78
Marissia’s brief, whispered report had been terrifying. The old familiar panic tightened Gavin’s chest. First had been news from all over the satrapies: twelve sea demons, swimming together in three precise ranks of four, circling all of Abornea five times before disappearing. A sheet of ice covering all of Crater Lake by Kelfing, though it was too warm. Herds of wild goats a thousand strong, standing all in precise rows. Poets struck dumb. Musicians writing a hundred pages of notation in a day, forgetting to eat or drink or sleep until they fell unconscious. Galley slaves rowing until they died, afraid of falling out of tempo. Captains plotting out constellations instead of piloting, running onto rocks. Mothers engaged in menial tasks abandoning their mewling infants until the tasks were complete.
There was a certain irony to order going out of control, but it wasn’t one the dead would appreciate. And that wasn’t the worst.
The alarm on the blue hadn’t gone off. She hadn’t known that Dazen had broken out. When was the last time Gavin had checked that mechanism? A year? A year and a half?
In the third year of Dazen’s imprisonment, hoping it would alleviate his terrible nightmares, Gavin had built in fail-safes. He thought. If Dazen broke into any prison, that very action was supposed to activate a glowing warning at the top of the chute: the alarm.
Either Marissia had been turned-no, the shock on her face had been real-or Gavin’s mechanism had failed.
If the chutes hadn’t switched over, Dazen would have starved to death by now. Gavin had made it so that if Dazen tried to throw luxin up the chute, it would switch it over as well-but if one mechanism had failed, others might have, too. Dammit. He hadn’t made them to last forever. Luxin decayed, even in darkness, and he’d crafted almost every part of the prisons from luxin.
If he’s dead, I’d have felt it, wouldn’t I? I knew something was wrong when Sevastian died. Surely…
The lift shuddered to a stop, just a couple floors down. Not many people had the keys to stop the Prism’s lift.
It was Grinwoody, giving his thin, unpleasant smirk, happy to interrupt. He extended a hand silently. Gavin took the note from the slave. He already knew what it was going to say.
“Son, come to my chambers. This is not a request.”
Pretty much as he guessed.
First, it was Kip and Samite in his room, keeping him from checking the chute’s alarm immediately. Then it was the “emergency meeting.” Now this.
But there was nothing for it. If Dazen had escaped, he was long gone by now. If he’d been starved, he was dead by now. Orholam have mercy, this put the wights’ talk about Dazen Guile coming to save them in a different light, didn’t it?
They knew. They’d been working to free him all along.
Peace, Gavin. Patience. If it’s done, it’s done. If not, don’t tip off the most cunning man in the world by acting strangely. He went with Grinwoody. There was nothing to be gained by putting it off. He wouldn’t be any more ready to face off with the tyrant later, and time wasn’t going to make Andross Guile’s anger cool. Indeed, getting to him now, when he was still fresh in his fury and hadn’t had time to plan his vengeance, might be best.
Gavin made his way into the dark room. The air was oppressive, hot. He hated it in here. Even illuminated with his superviolet lantern, there was a darkness here that clung to the bones and weakened the will.
“Gavin,” Andross Guile said. His voice was level, gravelly.
“Father.” He mustered what respect he could.
“You stabbed me in the back in there.” Andross Guile’s face was covered, of course, but his tone was almost bemused. He relished this, Gavin realized. There was nothing left to the old man now except proving his mastery, and there was no game that could compare to Gavin challenging him.
Andross was also certain that he would win, which frightened Gavin.
“I did what you taught me, father.”
“Stuck up for some wandering wretches from Tyrea?”