She cocooned herself in misery so she would not have to look right or left. So she would not have to see the scorched orchard, the trampled wheatfields, the smoke still crawling up from Stoffenbeck, pounded to ruins by cannon so meticulously cast in her own foundry.
All the while, she told herself she could not be blamed.
She had not wanted any of this, after all. She had wanted to marry Orso. More than anything. But she lost him because her mother once fucked a king. Curnsbick had been right, after Valbeck her judgement was no good. When Leo was served up to her, so handsome and celebrated and bursting with potential, just the delightful pastry her jaded palate needed, what choice did she have but to get her knife and fork out? And then, pregnant and puking and judgement even worse, what choice did she have but to marry him? And then, finding he was already balls-deep in conspiracy with Isher, what choice did she have but to join them and do everything to make a success of their preposterous scheme?
Making successes from men’s preposterous schemes was what she did, after all.
It was terribly unfair on her, when you thought about it, that she had lost everything because of who her mother fucked, by definition some time before she was born.
And then she thought of her father. Not King Jezal, the other one. The real one, blood or no blood. Sitting in his wheeled chair, tongue touching his empty gums and a brow critically raised. Perhaps after one of her arrogant overreaches in the fencing circle. Really, Savine?
“What have I done?” she whispered, and she sank down to one knee in the road.
If she had really tried, if she had truly wanted to, she could have found a way to stop this. There were a thousand moments when she could have found a way to stop this.
Instead, she had fanned the flames. Instead, she had rolled the dice. And what for? Ambition. That snake twisted tight about her innards whose hunger grew sharper the more it was fed. Whose hunger could never be satisfied.
The truth was, like all gamblers who suddenly lose big, she had only thought about what there was to win. Now she saw the scale of her loss, and it was no less than everything. And she had not only lost on her own behalf, but for thousands of others. What would it mean for Zuri? What would it mean for Broad? For Haroon and Rabik? For Liddy and May? By the Fates, what would it mean for her unborn child?
“What have I done?”
She felt Zuri’s light hand on one shoulder. “My scripture teacher would no doubt have said…” She was frowning doubtfully out across the battered battlefield. “That regret is the gateway to salvation…”
Savine gave a disbelieving snort. “Can you really still believe in God? That this is all part of some grand plan? That it means something?”
“What is the alternative?” Zuri looked at her, eyes wide. “To believe that it means nothing?”
Savine felt Broad’s heavy hand on her other shoulder. “No one makes a thing like this happen alone. We all had our hand in it.”
She slowly nodded. It would have been yet more appalling arrogance to suppose it was all her fault. She winced as she struggled to her feet, took a hard breath and, with one hand under her belly and one pressed into her back, struggled on across the wounded fields towards Stoffenbeck.
She had played her part in this.
All that remained was to pay for it.
She was not sure how long she sat there, waiting, in an agony of guilt, apprehension and, well, agony.
The pain in her head was getting no better. The pain in her bladder was most certainly getting worse. Her baby was endlessly shifting. Perhaps it was cursed with Leo’s impatience. Perhaps it was infected by her panic. Perhaps, like a rat scurrying from a foundering ship, it sensed she was going down and desperately struggled to wriggle free of her.
It must have had its mother’s instinct for self-preservation. Savine would have wriggled free of her own skin if she could.
From time to time, she heard guards outside the door. Muffled voices. Even laughter. She was a prisoner, then. Something she had better get used to, she supposed. Along with being universally reviled, all she had built ruined, her name used as a cheap joke or a warning lecture—
The door clattered open and she jerked up so suddenly she put a spasm through her back, nearly vomited and was trapped halfway to her feet, leaning on the chair with one trembling arm.
Orso stared at her, frozen. As if he had arranged an expression of righteous fury but on seeing her could not quite disguise his shock. Her belly, and her head wound, and her ripped and bloody clothes took some adjusting to, she supposed. The righteous fury soon returned, though.
“Don’t get up,” he snapped, though it was obvious she couldn’t have without block and tackle. She flopped back into the chair with all the grace of an ale keg with arms. Any trace of dignity she counted one of her least painful losses, at this point.
He shut the door, carefully not looking at her. He had changed, too. Harder. More purposeful. There was no hint of his old languid flourish as he stalked into the room with his fists clenched.
“I was surprised to hear you had given yourself up. I felt sure you’d be slithering away somewhere to hatch some new scheme.” The room was warm, but his voice was cold enough to make the hairs on her arms bristle.
“I knew that surrendering…” Her voice sounded pathetically weak. “Was the best thing I could do…” She was used to holding all the cards. Even with Orso, she was used to holding some. Now he had the entire deck. “For my child—”
“It’s a little late,” he barked at her, “to be thinking about that, don’t you think? Now the dead are stacked five high in the fields?”
Savine had not supposed they would trade quips like they used to. But she had never really seen him angry before. She began to wonder if this had been a terrible mistake. If she should have run while she had the chance, and never stopped.
“Were you a part of this?” He still refused to look at her, jaw muscles squirming on the side of his face. It came to her forcefully that with a word he could have her hanged beside all the rest. She would never have dreamed he would do it until that moment. Now she was not so sure.
Lies would not help her. It had to be the truth. “Yes,” she whispered. “I had a full part in it.”
“I would’ve been amazed if you hadn’t. But somehow I kept hoping.” Orso bared his teeth. “I received a letter, some time ago, warning me of a conspiracy to steal my throne. A plot by members of the Open Council. With friends in the North.”
Savine closed her eyes. Rikke. It could only have been Rikke. She had not merely let them down but betrayed them. Perhaps she really had seen the future. Savine might almost have admired her tactics, had she any emotion to spare. It was very much the sort of thing she might have done herself. Not that it mattered now. When she opened her eyes, Orso was staring at her with the strangest look.
“Why?” he asked.
Savine swallowed. She had planned the best way to frame it, how to subtly shift the blame, each word picked out as carefully as an ensemble for the theatre, but now the excuses burbled out in a half-baked rush. “They were already planning it. Isher, and the rest. I had no choice. I could only—”
“No.” Orso bit off every word. “I mean… why choose him… over me?”
She should have known he would ask. But she had told herself he no longer cared. That it was buried and would never need to be dug up. Now she realised her error, and she stared down at the carpet, her face burning, the breath crawling in her throat.