“Your grandfather said what?!” Karris asked.
“Mother, I hurt you somehow, and now you’re joining my enemies. I don’t understand!” His eyes filled with tears.
Andross! That bastard! He’d pretended he was going to take Karris’s side, and instead, this? Sowing more discord?
Zymun sank to a crouch, ashamed, and covered his eyes with his hands. “He said . . . he said he’d fought you for me, but you were pushing the Spectrum to get me disavowed as Prism-elect. He said he didn’t know why you hated me, but that once you hated, you never turned away from your wrath, that you never forgave anyone. Not ever in all your life. He forbade me to come speak to you of it. Told me I’d only arouse you further. But he doesn’t know you like I do. You’re not like that . . . are you?”
She stepped forward, aghast. Furious. What the hell was Andross playing at?!
Her only warning was that Zymun didn’t look up as he said the last words—‘are you?’
He didn’t search her face for any sign of forgiveness.
Her old Blackguard senses shrieked at her, but too late.
Zymun pounced, tackling her, and crushing her under his larger body. His eyes were full of color, but as devoid of feeling as a snake’s. He’d hidden them with his hands to hide that he was drafting.
Now luxin snared her hands, her throat.
He punched her hard in the stomach, but she took the blow with practiced ease. She immediately began wending a foot up for a wrestling hold—
—and stopped as he pricked a dagger point under her eyelid.
The flat, dead look in his eyes gave her no read.
If he killed her, they’d put him on Orholam’s Glare for sure. But he didn’t even seem to be aware of that. Had no concern for consequences in the least. Not in this. Not in anything.
She stopped fighting.
In moments, he’d immobilized her with luxin bonds.
“You’re scheming against me,” he said. “I know it. No seat on the Spectrum? No place in the councils of war? No honors that are due me? You treat me like a child! And it ends now.”
Quietly, calmly, despite the hand tight around her throat, Karris said, “May I speak, Zymun?”
“Son!” he said. “You call me son.”
“They warned me,” she said, her voice distant. “But I didn’t see you. Not as you are. I let my guilt blind me. For a time, but no more.”
“You’ll give me what I want,” Zymun said.
“Astonishing,” she said as if amused, though her guts squirmed. “So close to being given all you want and you can’t help but show your true colors. No. You’re no son of mine, Zymun. I disown you. Disavow you. I admit, you certainly do bear a resemblance to the worst parts of me, and perhaps you have my own father’s weak chin and venial disposition and shallow intellect, but you’re not the small, lame, petty shadow of Gavin Guile that I thought you were; you bear no likeness to him at all. I shall have to ponder that harried month when I conceived you. It seems more and more undeniable that I must have gotten very drunk and fucked a village idiot.”
“You . . . you cunt!”
“Get out,” she said, ignoring her bonds, ignoring that he was on top of her and she was helpless. “And never speak to me again.”
“I know how to break a woman,” he hissed, spit flying in her face. “I’ve done it before. It’s not so hard.”
“You’ll break nothing here,” Karris said. “You’ll walk out that door with your tail between your legs like the cur you are.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. He lifted the hand with the dagger. “You stupid bitch, I’ ll—”
He cut off as two spear blades slid into view. One sharp blade slipped beneath his wrist, so the dagger couldn’t descend without him slicing off his own hand. The other blade pressed along the side of Zymun’s neck.
Gill Greyling stood behind Zymun, spears trembling in his grip, not with fear but with rage.
Karris had never been happier to see anyone in her life.
“Give me the excuse,” Gill said. His voice was raspy. The man had been on edge perpetually since his brother died.
Zymun eased up, carefully dropping the dagger on the carpet, far out, raising his hands slowly and releasing the luxin to dust. “Could have sworn I barred that door,” he said, good-naturedly, as if it had all been a joke. He rocked back on his heels and stood slowly.
Derisively, Karris laughed at him as if he were the stupidest man she’d ever met. “As if the Blackguard doesn’t have ways to open the doors here?”
His face dropped, and the mask slipped to show the depth of the ugliness within him. He couldn’t stand disrespect.
She only hoped he’d attack.
Gill would kill him—he wouldn’t try to wound or incapacitate him, she knew. She knew her Blackguards.
She stood up and brushed the luxin dust off.
Now she was free, though, and this was all out in the open. She was honestly relieved. No more pretenses.
“Zymun,” she said. “Until tonight, I didn’t scheme against you. Not ever. But now I will. Thank you for bringing your true nature to light. History will judge me for giving birth to a monster. But at least I have the decency to hate him.”
But his dead eyes betrayed nothing even of rage now. He walked out the door, then stopped and turned. “Oh, may I have my dagger, please? It was a gift from my grandfather.”
“Try to take it,” Gill said dangerously. “See what happens.”
Zymun didn’t move.
“What’s your name again, Blackguard?” Zymun demanded.
“You don’t remember?” Gill asked, looking at him contemptuously. “A true Guile would.”
Chapter 61
“I have news about our hunt,” Quentin said. He furrowed his thick brows. “Good news, barely good news, and definitely not good news.”
Teia had managed to pull her shit together, somewhat, and hadn’t asked Quentin for a hug the other day, despite having told him the outlines of how she’d killed Ravi and what she’d learned. She’d fled then to her solitude, only giving him the name ‘Atevia Zelorn.’
She still wanted that hug, actually, but . . . Quentin was so damned awkward, and he didn’t like to be touched. It would be selfish. And probably not satisfying. Right? “Go ahead,” she said.
She’d asked to hear about his project first; it gave her time to gather her wits.
“Easy one first,” he said. “Zelorn is indeed a wine merchant. Very successful one, too. Well-known among the nobility. Karris didn’t have her people dig too deeply, though, lest it alarm anyone.” He described where to find Zelorn’s house, and his profile: physical description, style of clothing, three kids, six slaves, various servants between home and business, two long-term mistresses, and a pretty young wife who spent a lot of time crying about his many affairs, the pursuit of which seemed to be his main pastime.
Other than being a pagan priest, Teia thought.
“That was the shallow digging?” Teia asked.
“That’s exactly how I reacted,” Quentin said. “High Lady Guile said, ‘Of course. Anyone in the upper nobility would dig that much into anyone they were considering doing even casual business with.’ ”