“So my hopes reside with Eirene Malargos? Comforting.”

“I could force her hand, you know. Your father has offered to buy you.”

“He has?” Father knew. He knew Gavin was here. That solved some problems. And made more, naturally.

“Ah, so you think he knows you’re here? No. He’s merely offered a general bounty—er, reward. You hurt me, Gavin. And for that I’m going to hurt you.”

Going there would be disaster if that trinket really did what she said it did. “Tell me about the orange seed crystal,” he said.

But she wasn’t about to let him control the conversation. “You turned my brothers against me. You made them abandon me.”

“You’re angry about that? Not the other?” Gavin asked.

“You thought I’d been pining after you for sixteen years? You took my virginity, not my wits.”

Gavin was left speechless. He’d known she was furious with his brother Gavin. He’d figured Gavin had deserved it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask in a letter. ‘Are you still angry that I left you behind?’ That ‘I’ could be a bitter thing to write, at times.

“You stole Hanishu and Harrdun.” She wouldn’t call them Ironfist and Tremblefist. “To be Blackguards! Slaves. Disgusting. And they left me to do it. They thought you were more important than I. And you let them go. What are they to you but more bodies to be spent in your protection? Nothing. If you had a thumb’s worth of generosity in you, you would have sent them back. You left me at my home, seventeen years old, in charge of a tribe shocked and devastated by our enemies. I had to marry the man who’d had my mother assassinated. I spent ten years digging myself out of the hole you put me in.”

“Join the fucking queue,” Gavin said. “War is hard. People die. You got dealt such a raw hand that you rose to become the Nuqaba. Your brothers would be ashamed of what you’ve become.”

Her eyes went cold. “Well, at last some fire. I wondered if that man was dead. You’ve become a schemer, Gavin Guile, but at least you have some passion left.”

“Your brothers did what they thought was their duty. I compelled nothing. I won’t deny that I wanted Ironfist to stay. He’s one of the smartest, most capable commanders I’ve ever met, and having him on my side is a huge advantage. What Prism would willingly give up such a strong right hand? And Tremblefist didn’t want to stay in Paria. Couldn’t. Of course he went where Ironfist went, but he, too, has been exemplary. His quiet competence inspires all the Blackguards.”

“He should have turned to me. After … after Aghbalu.”

“To his little sister? To understand a killing rage? Rather than to his big brother, who’d been a veteran of war?”

“I’m his sister! He shouldn’t have turned to you!”

“It wasn’t to me.” Well, the seed crystal would tell her that was true, at least. But she wasn’t even looking at it.

“It was you.”

“Fine, then. I gave him what you never could,” Gavin said. His sins might be manifold and worthy of death, but this wasn’t one of them. “I gave him trust, when he didn’t trust himself. A sister’s trust means nothing in such a case. No fault of yours. He needed something that he would have to earn. The trust of a man who had no reason to love him? That brought him back. He is not that which you knew as a little girl. He’ll never be that. What was done to him, and what he did, changed that forever. When I look at him, I don’t look for the man who’s gone. You would. That’s why he’s never gone back.”

“This,” she said, “this is what I hate about you, Gavin. After all I’ve been through, after all I’ve suffered, in five minutes you make it sound trivial. You turn it around so that somehow it’s my fault. Like I should thank you for taking my brothers from me. Like all this devastation has just been in my own head. I’m the Nuqaba. I’m a master of orange luxin. I’m the nearest thing to a queen these satrapies have known in centuries, and you make me feel a stupid little girl.”

She reached into the folds of her haik and produced a small matchlock pistol. Working the match cord free, she walked over to one of the small lanterns in the cellar. She rested the pistol on a shelf, lifted the lantern hood, and lit the match cord. “If you died in Eirene’s custody,” she said, “your father would hold her accountable. Her protestations that I’d killed you would seem weak lies, evasions.” She took up the pistol, cocked the hammer, and affixed the match cord. “Eirene would be furious with me, of course, but she wouldn’t risk putting herself in reach of Andross Guile’s vengeance. She’d join me.”

The Nuqaba leveled the pistol at Gavin’s face. Stepped forward so she was certain she wouldn’t hit the bars.

She winked at him, grinning, and he almost grinned back. Then he realized she’d winked closing her right eye. She was giving him the evil eye: judging him with Cursed Accuser, while the right eye of Orholam, Blessed Redeemer, was closed.

Gavin flicked his eyes ever so briefly up over her shoulder, toward the door, and twitched his lips in a fraction-of-a-second grin.

The Nuqaba glanced at the door. Gavin lunged. He slammed against the bars, extending one arm, jamming a shoulder as far through as he could. His hand slapped against her hand and pistol, for the barest instant, he had it in his grip, and then, without his third and fourth fingers, he couldn’t hold on to it. The pistol flew out of her hand and smacked into the wall, discharging.

The rapid whine of ricochets filled the cellar.

After the roar, for a long moment, they stood staring at each other. Gavin pulled his shoulder back through the bars, and felt himself, to see if he’d been hit. He hadn’t, but his two stumps of fingers were bleeding again. Damn. He’d had to attack with his left hand, but his instincts hadn’t adjusted to the loss of his fingers.

He looked to the Nuqaba to see if she’d been hit. Her eyes were wide. Her arm was bleeding. She took a handkerchief and dabbed her forearm. Just a scratch. She looked relieved.

In moments, a flood of guards burst into the room, drawn by the shot. Parians in blue vests, armed to the teeth, drafters all, the Nuqaba’s personal guard, the Tafok Amagez. Then a few Malargos house guards. Gavin raised his hands to show he was no threat.

“It’s fine,” the Nuqaba said. “I’m well. You may go. There’s no threat here. Just a little accident. Why is my…”

She looked down and lifted a bit of her haik from over her thigh. There was a small hole in the fabric. But Gavin’s eyes were drawn lower, where blood was pooling around her feet. A lot of blood. Like an artery had been cut.

She wobbled, her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.

Chapter 60

~The High Luxiat~

The message in my hand is death. This, of course, has no bearing on its righteousness. But by my inner light, I know this is darkness.

“Orholam himself set the earth to spinning, little brother,” Brother Tawleb says. Tawleb is one of the six High Luxiats, and I’m nervous just speaking with him.

He doesn’t need to finish the phrase: to give the earth and all its creatures rest from his burning gaze. That there be a time for light, and a time for darkness.