“Won. I won.”
That earned some silence.
“So you get your own satrap. By itself, worthless. This new Tyrea may not even survive. So you get a vote on the Spectrum you can count on for a couple years. No subtlety, though. If you want to own Colors, there are better ways. Why did you defy me?”
“Funny,” Gavin said. “That was exactly my question for you. Why oppose me, father? What do you care if we fight or not? It’s not like anyone’s going to ask you to take the field. What do you care even if I become promachos again? What could be better for our family?”
“You forget who asks the questions here,” Andross snapped.
Gavin sat in one of the old armchairs. Once regal, it was now shabby. “So you’ve been playing Nine Kings with Kip? How good is he?” It was a petty defiance, asking more questions by misdirection when his father had laid down the law. But he thought Andross would find it irresistible. The man had nothing but his games now.
Andross smiled, a rictus bent upward. “After the war, you lost your focus, Gavin. You could have been as good as me. Now you’re running out of time, and you’ll never be my equal. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”
Misjudged me? There’s an understatement. You saggy-drawered monster. Mother took one look at me after Sundered Rock and knew me. You’ve talked to me a thousand times since, and still don’t know me. You never knew me, you blind old fool. “You don’t know what it does to me to consider that I might not be like you,” Gavin said, tone flat.
“It’s time for you to marry,” Andross said.
Gavin had thought the old man might have forgotten. He himself nearly had. It was a shot in the gut.
“I’ll only marry one woman,” Gavin said.
“I’m only asking you to marry one. You’ve got five years. If you can give me four sons, perhaps one of them will have a spine on which I’ll have a chance at rebuilding this family.”
“I have a son,” Gavin said. Kip, who was actually his brother’s son. What a horrible mess.
“A bastard.” Andross waved a hand. “He will be pushed aside in due time. Until your true heirs reach majority, Kip will serve in other ways. To serve as a focus for other families’ assassination attempts and so forth. But Kip will never carry this family’s name forward.”
Gavin tented his fingers, sneering, but of course Andross couldn’t see it. “What’s your master plan, then?”
Andross Guile’s lips thinned. He sat across from Gavin. “I was going to give you your choice of a wife. There were three strong contenders from families wealthy enough or connected in useful ways, and the girls young enough to give you children quickly. Young enough to be… malleable. Solicitous.”
“You mean you could control them after I die.”
“Of course. You bed a strong-willed woman and she might steal your future and disappear.” Andross gave a malicious grin.
Gavin froze. From the tone and the smile, the sentence was meant to be a knife under his armor-under Gavin’s armor-and he had no idea what his father was talking about.
Say the wrong thing, and he’ll know.
So he said nothing, as if stricken. Which he was, if for the wrong reasons.
The knife. It had something to do with the knife.
“Are you curious who they were?” Andross asked.
“Please,” Gavin said lightly. He swallowed.
“Your little temptress Ana Jorvis, Naftalie Delara, and Eva Golden Briar. I was even going to add Liv Danavis, if you’d managed to save Garriston with her father’s help. Of course, now you’ve bound the Danavis clan to us forever in another way so it’s a moot point. Regardless,” Andross Guile said, “now you’ve destroyed that choice for yourself. I’ll give you this, son, you present me with interesting challenges.”
Grinwoody brought them tea. Gavin picked up his cup. “Father, speaking of moot, all of this is moot. I’m not going to marry-”
“Tisis Malargos.”
The teacup hovered in front of Gavin’s mouth. “Pardon?”
“She’s nineteen. Not so young she’ll get pregnant if you sneeze at her, but young enough to bear quickly. Pretty, too, or so Grinwoody says. Her older sister Eirene took over the family’s financial affairs after Dervani didn’t come back from the war. Brilliant merchant, Eirene. She’s built the family into a financial juggernaut, and the dowry she’s promised for Tisis, whilst enormous, pales in comparison to the wealth Tisis will inherit when Eirene dies.”
“What? Why would Tisis inherit from her sister?”
“Eirene’s a tribadist. And not fond enough of children to get on her back for any man. Smart enough, though, to carry on flirtations with many men in order to secure better business deals for herself, and, she thinks, to keep us in line if her sister does marry you. In this, she’s partly correct: there will be no divorce or flagrant affairs while you are married to Tisis, Gavin.”
“What?!” Gavin still hadn’t processed the first part. His father wanted him to marry Tisis? She was the woman who’d sabotaged Kip’s testing. She was the woman Gavin had just thrown out of the Spectrum.
Orholam have mercy. Gavin’s mother had confessed to ordering Dervani murdered-because he knew Dazen’s secret. And now his father wanted him to marry a woman whose father Felia Guile had murdered.
“You see the beauty of it? Eirene holds her inheritance against us, and we hold Kip against her. If she leaves our family to inherit everything, we disown Kip. It’s not the only card we have to play, but it is always a good idea to make your opponent pay you to sacrifice a card you didn’t want to play anyway.”
In purely tactical terms, Gavin saw the appeal-not to his family, but to himself. Tisis was a beautiful woman, who might still be turned into a friend rather than the enemy he’d thought he’d just made. And by doing this, he’d keep his father from destroying Kip. At least he would buy Kip time. Gavin’s own time was drawing to a close, and there would be no one to protect Kip when he was gone-and if Gavin died before Andross did, Kip would need that protection. But “Father, why don’t you turn your mind to helping me for once? The only woman I’ll consent to marry is Karris White Oak.”
Andross Guile snorted. “And she brings what to this family? A few barren estates? Her family alliances allowed to wither while she plays Blackguard? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Gavin took a sip of his tea. When his nerves steadied, very calmly, very quietly, he said, “It’s her or it’s no one.”
“You were always my favorite son, Gavin. Thought I saw myself in you. Thought I saw will in you. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too bitterly that you turn it against me now, though you have good reasons not to. You remember what we did to make you Prism. You owe everything you are to me, son. So now either you do exactly what I tell you or the cost will be more swift and grievous than you can imagine.”
Gavin got up without saying a word.
“Son, let me hear you say it. Say you’ll obey me in this.”
Gavin walked to the door, parted the dark curtains, and stepped through, out of the cloying darkness.
“Gavin!” his father shouted. He sounded old. He sounded weak. “Gavin!”
Chapter 79
“Good evening,” Gavin greeted the Blackguards at the door to his rooms. He didn’t recognize either man. They were young, maybe eighteen. They looked like children-and when eighteen-year-old men look like children to you, it’s a sure sign that you’re getting old.
What did you do when you were eighteen, Gavin?
Too much. But that was a distraction. Here were two Blackguards he didn’t know, despite knowing all the Blackguards. Two Blackguards, alone with him. This was how assassination attempts began. He’d been warned.
The men saluted him. “Lord Prism.”
“What’re your names?” Gavin asked.
“Gill and Gavin Greyling, sir,” the elder said.
Brothers, of course. He should have picked it up. “ Gavin? ” he asked the younger.
The boy beamed. “Yes, sir, named after-”
“After our mother saw that he was a bit ill-favored, my lord,” Gill said dryly.