“How about you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine?” Gavin said. “I don’t even know why you hate me.” That was, of course, a lie.

“Everything’s a competition with you, isn’t it?” she asked. Her tone was almost sad, and Gavin got a premonition that this was a very, very bad thing. “It’s all about will, and Gavin Guile is will incarnate. Is that what you think? Is that how you see the world? Even broken, in a cage, you think that if you act like the bars are nothing, they will be nothing. Perhaps that was true once. You’re not the Prism anymore, Guile. You’re a husk. You’re a broken galley slave is all. Just another man, demanding my surrender. Do you know what your weakness is, former Prism?”

“Women. Especially glamorous women. A woman who knows how to not just wear a ball gown, but really own it is rarer than hellstone. And fit women. And women with an ample bust. Or slender women. Let’s not forget intelligent women. You can’t dismiss the value of a wicked mind in the bedchamber.” Or one woman who is all of that and more. Gavin’s heart ached suddenly under a stupid grin mask.

“Put your hands up on the bars,” Eirene said.

Gavin did.

“Spread your fingers.”

Not a good sign. But she was standing back far enough that he could certainly snatch his own hand back before she could reach out and hurt him. He did it.

“Pick a number between one and ten.”

Didn’t like where this was going. With his hands held up in front of his face…”One,” he said, as if picking that because he would always pick number one.

She started at the right. “One,” she said, pointing to his little finger on his left hand. She smiled unpleasantly. “I’m going to give you a choice that I think will demonstrate to you your real weakness.”

“I admit, when I have to count beyond ten, if my toes are in boots, I do have trouble.”

“Here’s your choice, Gavin Guile.”

Orholam have mercy, she said his name so many times it was driving him crazy. It was like she knew.

“Would you prefer to have the word ‘FOOL’ tattooed across your face in as big of letters as we can fit, or would you prefer to lose your little finger? Your choice,” she said. She crossed her arms.

“That’s a terrible test. It doesn’t even remotely show what you think it shows,” Gavin said.

She said, “You say one more word other than ‘finger’ or ‘tattoo’ and I’ll have you suffer both.”

She was going to say he was being vain, if he chose to lose the finger. That vanity was his weakness. But what army in the world would follow a man with ‘FOOL’ etched across his face? He had hurdles enough to overcome with the loss of his drafting to try to lead. A constant humiliation would make leadership impossible. There would be no covering such a thing. Gavin had seen people who’d tried to cover unfortunate tattoos. It would make an even bigger joke out of him.

He looked down the hallway, where a pair of servants stood, looking through the open door, watching for any sign from Lady Malargos. He took a deep, slow breath. With his cracked ribs, it hurt like hell. Which meant this next was going to be ten times worse.

“My name is Gavin Guile!” he roared, shouting toward the servants, toward the open door. “And my father will give a fortune to whoever reports my presence here! My father is Andross Guile! Any who aid in this torture will pay the price!”

As soon as he started shouting, the servants panicked. They didn’t immediately see Eirene’s sign to slam the door, and he got almost all of it out before they did so.

For his part, Gavin sank to the floor, tears leaking from his eyes. He tried to breathe in tiny little gulps. Maybe not cracked ribs. Maybe fully broken.

“What the hell was that?” Eirene demanded.

“That was me giving you the finger.”

Chapter 47

Teia couldn’t stop looking at her bloody hands. Half under her breath, she said, “Wasn’t right.”

“Huh?” Kip asked.

“What we did. That wasn’t right,” she said. She looked up at him, and felt shame cover her like a snowdrift blowing off Hellmount itself. She said, “I murdered a man.”

The safe house where they’d gathered wasn’t even a house. It had been a chicken coop built onto the side of a cooper’s shop. None of them knew when the Blackguard had acquired the place, but it had been walled off from the cooper’s, had a few tools propped up around the low front door, and was made to look like a shed. Inside, the ground had been excavated to make the single room far bigger than looked possible from the outside. Half a dozen bunk beds, three high, lined the walls. A stove cleverly piped to share the cooper’s chimney rested on one wall. Stores of food and weapons and clothing took up most of the rest of what little space there was.

“You—we—killed a man,” Kip said.

“Oh, what difference is there? He’s dead! I messed up!”

“We’re warriors, Teia,” Kip said like she was being stupid. “That’s what all this is for.”

“I know! I know,” she said. She looked around at the rest of their squad. She shook her head. She was letting them down. She should just shut up. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. Can you throw me the fucking towel already, Ferkudi?”

“You’ll get it when I’m done, bitch,” Ferkudi said. He was usually good-natured, but when he wasn’t, he was an ogre.

Kip moved faster than Teia would have believed he could. He grabbed Ferkudi by the front of his tunic in both hands and lifted the young man off his feet and slammed his back against the wall. “That’s my partner,” he said. “That’s your squadmate. I know you’re shaken up. But. Don’t.”

Ferkudi’s feet weren’t even touching the ground—and Ferkudi was one of the biggest boys in the squad. Holy shit. Kip was getting strong.

Kip released him. “Towel. Please.”

Ferkudi handed the towel over. Looked away. “Sorry,” he grumbled.

“To her.”

“Sorry, Teia,” he rumbled. “Didn’t mean to be such a flesh protuberance.”

“I’ll take it outta you in training,” Teia said. She hit him in the arm, not too gently. But she was glad he’d apologized. She liked Ferkudi, but that had infuriated her, and she didn’t have it in her to take him down a peg herself. Not right now.

Kip handed her the towel. “You were saying?”

She took the towel angrily, which he didn’t deserve, and she knew it, and it made her angrier. “Get off it, Breaker. You’re not my father.” It wasn’t fair. She’d felt gratified that he’d come to her defense, but she was suddenly just so angry, so close to tears.

“No, but I’ve killed men. Spit it out.”

Teia began wiping her hands off. Stared firmly down at the towel, her hands, the task. “What if … what if they have a point? The Blood Robes, I mean.”

“To hell with them,” Winsen said. “Kill ’em all. Let Orholam sort ’em.”

Teia had heard similar statements before, but they’d been boasts. Childishness. With Winsen, it didn’t seem like a put-on.