“Battles are won or lost in throne rooms,” he said in a measured tone. “And though you have great skill in slinging arrows and sparring with words, never have you taken them to a true battlefield. Now you have. This has been good practice.”
“Practice?” Her brother had persuaded good, rational men that she was a demon, that she had murdered Ran Marek and driven Ran Ashev to violent madness. And her brother had twisted and twisted and twisted every truth, as Yvenne had told Maddek that Bazir would, and yet he still forbade her from speaking her own. “This was a true battle and you denied me a sword and shield.”
For the barest moment, his gaze touched her face—and that gaze was not calm. Smoldering anger burned in his dark eyes—and she abruptly understood that Bazir’s words had elicited a response. But Maddek had not let that emotion overrule his actions or his thoughts.
As she had. Nothing Maddek had said to Gareth to persuade him of their truth had been unknown to her. Maddek had chosen an angle of attack that the Tolehi minister would best respond to—by telling Gareth what he’d seen with his own eyes. An angle that Yvenne would have used herself had she not allowed her brother to provoke her. If she had not been so torn by frustration and rage at not being able to speak her truth.
She had thought herself prepared to face her brother, yet she had not been. Perhaps because after so many years spent on the alliance council, Bazir had so much experience in similar battlefields.
It had been a valuable lesson. Yet her frustration and rage and disappointment still filled her chest and throat, choking her. Because Maddek might have let her speak of Ran Ashev and still she would have learned the lesson. Her brother would have twisted that, too, but she would have eventually seen that she’d failed in her attack, and tried another direction. She’d have stopped sparring with her brother and focused on Gareth, as Maddek had.
And she was embarrassed. How arrogant and foolish she seemed, lecturing him on how to respond to her brother and behave through this dinner.
So badly she wanted to be alone now. So desperately she wanted to find a private spot and cry until emptied of all this hot, painful emotion clogging her heart and throat.
Yet she could not. Prince Cadus approached, carrying her jeweled blade. His expression seemed both abashed and amused. “My sister once threw a knife at me over dinner, too. My response was to dump a trencher of stewed boa over her head. Family has the special ability to lower even the most reasonable among us to the level of slinging blades and meats.”
Maddek gave an amused grunt. “That is truth.”
So many attendants swarmed around Bazir now that Yvenne could not even see him. She leaned forward, trying to better catch sight of what damage there was. “Did I put out his eye?”
In a reassuring voice, Cadus replied, “It will merely be swollen and bruised.”
She sat back with a scowl.
“Did you note his bare lie?” Maddek said, glancing up at the prince.
“I did.” Cadus appeared abashed again. “As did Gareth, I think.”
Yvenne looked at him in amazement. “You think there was only one lie?”
The prince shook his head, a dull flush on his cheeks. “Now I do not. But when he arrived and sought an audience, it seemed fair to give equal weight and consideration to his story that I did to yours.”
“Why? If you have bread in one hand and dung in the other, you do not have to give equal consideration of which to eat,” Yvenne said, and beside her, Maddek grunted in amused agreement.
“That is truth,” the prince admitted. “But he was . . . persuasive. And consistent. Nothing he said contradicted what was known, and he never contradicted himself. Except he claimed Ran Ashev had murdered Lazen in her rampage. But he then told the commander it was you who murdered Lazen, after you angered him by showing the blade that killed Cezan.”
That had not been her intention. Yvenne only meant to present evidence of the blade she’d stolen from Cezan. But seeing it—or perhaps seeing how happily Yvenne confessed to stabbing Cezan with it—made even the more experienced Bazir lose his sense in battle, too. “What will you do with him now?”
“That will be a matter for the alliance council to resolve. In the morning, I will tell Gareth to return to Ephorn with him. For even though your brother is a council minister, someone who has attacked the character of a woman under my protection in such a foul manner is no longer welcome. Their purpose in coming was in search of you, who they believed had been abducted and were in danger at the commander’s hands; now they have found you under my protection. They can have no reason to remain in my city, and have no standing to compel either you or the commander to return with them.”
Bazir would not return to Ephorn or wait for the alliance council to resolve this. What had happened here only made the attack in their chambers more certain—and Bazir more desperate to succeed, because he no longer had the Tolehi minister’s ear and would soon lose the legitimizing support of the council.
Unease and uncertainty clutched her heart. She’d thought herself prepared to face him here . . . and for the Parsatheans to face an attack from his guard. But what if that was also only foolishness and arrogance?
At the other end of the table, her brother climbed to his feet, holding a folded white cloth over his injured eye. Gleeful murder shone through moonstone when his uncovered eye focused on her—but only for a moment, when he was forced to avert his gaze from hers.
Noticing her diverted attention, Cadus glanced behind. He looked down at the dagger in his hand, then to Yvenne, before placing the blade in front of Maddek—as if the prince feared she might attempt to use it again. In deliberate movement, Maddek slid the dagger nearer to Yvenne, the scrape of jewels and silver across the table’s marble surface loud and unmistakable.
By Vela’s teeth, she was tempted to try. Instead she took another lesson from Maddek and picked a bite of fish from her plate, though she would not be able to choke it down while her stomach roiled.
His face a picture of relief, Cadus stepped back and clapped his hands together lightly in satisfaction. “Ah! Bazir is on his feet, so it seems all is well. I fear the excitement has interrupted plans to celebrate this evening’s blessed event, however—and since the sun is nearly set, I believe the lovers must be eager to abandon us.”
Not as eager as she had been. Not with the terrible storm of emotions raging inside her now.
With lip curled, Bazir looked upon her as he might look upon a crawling slimeworm. “You are so hungry for your throne, Yvenne, that you will spend your life spreading your thighs beneath that hulking, grunting brute?”
“No.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Maddek’s fist clench into a white-knuckled grip. The dagger was so near to her hand. She only flaked another bite of fish from her plate. “I suspect that for much of my life, I will not be beneath my grunting brute, but happily spreading my thighs to ride him.”