Truth was, it would probably take her years and a civil war for her to rule Paria outright. And when she won—if she won—Paria would be at its weakest precisely at the time when the Color Prince began to reap the riches of the satrapies.

Parians were great warriors, but they weren’t so great that they could fight five satrapies. And in the meantime, as he subdued the other satrapies, the Color Prince wouldn’t have to face those Parian warriors and Parian ships.

We so easily convince ourselves that what is good for me is also good for others.

If Gavin had been promachos, he could have stopped the Color Prince before Sun Day.

Of course, it’s different when you’re right.

Truth was, he could have stopped him even without being promachos. Sending the Blackguard searching some of the rivers in Atash that might hold harbors fit for shipbuilding. The skimmers changed everything, and Gavin was more adept at figuring out the implications of rapid changes than most. The Blackguards could have found those harbors—if they existed—in a few weeks. With the amount of lumber collected all in one place, it would have taken only a single good red drafter and a spark. They’d have destroyed the Color Prince’s fleet before it could sully the waves.

If I were in charge, things would be better.

Said every tyrant ever.

“Why are you grinning?” the Nuqaba asked, peeved.

“I’ve got my health, my family, one and a half hands, two good eyes, what’s not to love?” Gavin asked.

“We’ll change that soon enough,” she snarled.

“That’s why it was a joke…”

Her face contorted, and he was suddenly glad she didn’t have a pistol now. Didn’t like condescension, this one.

My brain seems stuck in the obvious right now. Perhaps to deny what’s coming.

“Though I will sit close enough to hear the hissing and popping of your eyes, to savor your screams, I wish I could be there on your ship home, as you jerk and twitch at every touch, every voice, wondering which one is my assassin, wondering how you can fight off a death you can see coming, but only metaphorically. When they shave your cheeks clean, will you wonder if that razor will later taste your throat? What savage nightmares will you have before you die?”

“So,” he said, “you act the evil gloating traitorous bitch queen laudably enough, but I’m bored. Are we going to do this? Hard to escape when I’m stuck in a cell.”

“Such things have to happen at noon. And I’m not giving you any chance to escape. We’ll go straight to the hippodrome. I wanted to do it tomorrow, as part of the Sun Day festivities, but the Ruthgari have a different view of things.”

“Spilling blood as defilement, yes, pity, that.”

“Yes, pity,” she said flatly. “So we’ll do it today.”

She stared at him for long minutes, seeming to savor the darkness he tried to hide growing in his breast like the white egg of black widow spiders undulating slowly until it suddenly split, bursting forth a black, creeping explosion. He tried to keep the horror off his face, the fear that he’d convinced himself he simply didn’t have the capacity to feel. He was wrong, and the hopelessness crept in a black wave up over his defenses, over his bravado, and finally over his face.

She saw, and smiled.

Finally, a knock on the door. “Your Eminence,” a voice said, “it’s time.”

Chapter 79

Kip had barely escaped to his room and his pounding head and his flickering visions when there was a rapid knock on his door. Teia.

“Go away,” Kip said. He sounded like a petulant child, and he hated himself for it.

“Breaker,” she said. “You need me.”

But when she said ‘Breaker’ again he heard ‘Diakoptês,’ the sense of two languages colliding, intertwining. Diakoptês: he who rends asunder. He heard a woman whisper it in his ear, sharing a secret. He heard an old man screaming it in despair in the distance. He heard a crowd chanting it until it melded with ‘Break-er, Break-er!’

“Breaker, open the door,” Teia said, and Kip was aware of himself once again, leaning against the doorframe, head down, heart racing. He opened the door.

Teia came in. “Decision time,” she said. “Your grandfather is going to know about your half brother’s arrival any moment, if he doesn’t already. He’ll send for Zymun, and then he’ll send for you. Right?”

“I suppose,” Kip said.

“What’ll happen?”

“We tried to kill each other the last time we met, Teia, and Zymun’s not the forgive-and-forget type.” But even as Kip said the name ‘Zymun,’ it echoed in his head. Zymun the Dancer. Forests flashed before his eyes, light streaming through morning mist, rising in a meadow. A man he knew well, lying prone at my feet. Unconscious? No, dead. Dead, Kip was certain of it. And—

Gone. Only to be replaced by dazzling pain.

“Breaker! Pay attention! ‘Who hesitates…’” she quoted. “Finish it.”

“‘Is lost,’” Kip said.

“So, you’ve got a choice. Wait until your grandfather summons you and dance to his tune again, or run.”

“Run?” Kip asked. White and black spots were still slamming into each other companionably in front of his face.

“Take a ship. Take it anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to hire a—”

“I do.”

“Or how much to pay for pass—”

“Two hundred danars. You’ve got five times that in your stash.” She pointed at his hidden coin stash.

“You know about my coins?” Kip asked.

“You’re many things, Breaker, but sneaky ain’t one.”

Breaker. Again, it was like someone rang a cymbal next to his ear. But it didn’t distract him completely. ‘Breaker,’ she’d said. And ‘ain’t’? Teia didn’t talk like that. Not usually. She was establishing distance between them.

Kip didn’t even know what he’d done. “It was the booger thing, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Kip! No time!”

But a flush of red suffused the gray of her cloak, until she noticed it, and it went back to flat boring gray immediately.

Kip drew his green spectacles and tried to draft enough to nudge the coin sticks off the rafter, but at the first infusion of green, he almost retched.

“Teia, I don’t suppose you could draft to knock the coins down for— Oh, you only draft paryl, never mind.”

“Boost me,” she said. They’d worked together long enough that he did it automatically.

The plan is that I fling her up to the window ledge, and she’ll lie down, extend a hand for me to grab. I’m the heavier by far. It’s how we always do it.

But the fire is too intense. Nearly smokeless, intense. The reds are pouring luxin into the manse. Overkill, but we’ve given them reason to fear a team of Shimmercloaks.

I fling Gebalyn skyward, the hem of her shimmercloak trailing fire.

Teia sprang up and grabbed the coin sticks, and he caught her on the way down.

Distracted by the vision of fire, his hands stayed on Teia’s hips just a moment too long.

“Kip,” she said. She thumped his wrist with a coin stick.