Her bravery made Liv tear up. She studiously avoided looking at Vena, sure she’d lose control if she did.
But all too soon, they were at the docks. They said their goodbyes tearfully, promising to write, Liv promising that she would use any connections she could make to get Vena reinstated. Vena smiled sadly, resigned.
“Come on, ladies,” the captain said. “Time and the tide wait for no man, nor for blubbering girls, neither.”
Liv hugged Vena one more time and left. She’d barely stepped off the wood of the dock when she saw a familiar figure lurking in the shadows like a spider. Aglaia Crassos.
“You!” Liv said. “This is your work!”
Aglaia smiled. “I wonder, Liv, do you think we owe a debt to our friends? A debt of love, or duty?”
“Of course we do.”
“But apparently your duty to your friend isn’t as important as your need to defy me.”
“You bitch,” Liv said, quivering.
“I’m not the one who’s letting her friend pay for my pride. It can stop, Liv, or it can get worse.”
“You still want me to spy on the Prism.”
“Vena’s not going home, just so you know. I own her contract already. And I’ve got a deal with a rather… dubious Ilytian. He’s willing to give me a good price for Vena. Most people have scruples about selling drafters. Of course, she’s not a full drafter, so she won’t be entitled to any of a drafter’s normal privileges. But, hey, Vena loves sailing, right? Not many women on the galleys. They don’t usually last very long, nor do the other slaves treat them well, so owners usually put women to other work. But I can arrange it.”
Not just a slave. A galley slave. The worst of the worst. Liv wanted to vomit. She wanted to murder Aglaia. Orholam save her.
“Or…” Aglaia said, “you give me the word.” She nodded toward a messenger standing across the street. “And he runs to the captain with a message, saying it’s all a mistake, Vena’s been reinstated, and so forth. Wonder of wonders. You are my own special project, Liv. You have my full attention.”
Liv looked at the boat, despairing. It was true. She had no friends, no options, no choices. How could she fight Aglaia Crassos, with all her wealth and power? If she asked the Prism for help, he’d ask questions. He’d think she’d been spying all along. Every part of the Chromeria and the satrapies was corrupt; they were all turned against her.
“Hurry, Liv, the tide’s turning,” Aglaia said.
There was no way out, no time to try to come up with a third way. Maybe her father would have said no and spat in Aglaia’s ugly face and held on to his honor. Liv wasn’t that strong. The sharks and sea demons had her. “Fine,” she said, her heart failing within her. “You win. What do I have to do?”
Chapter 49
Gavin hadn’t even gotten fully out of his father’s apartments when he saw trouble coming. His mother’s apartments were right beside his father’s, and there was no way he could leave without passing in front of her doors—and her doors were open.
Every time. Every burning time. If his father’s windows hadn’t all been bolted shut and covered with layers of fabric, Gavin would have jumped out of a window. In fact, it was just during one of these sorts of situations that he’d first drafted a bonnet. Every time he came back from even the shortest trip, it seemed he spent all day meeting with one important person after another. All he did was meet with people—and every one of them had demands of him.
Nonetheless, Gavin turned in as he went past his mother’s open doors. The room slave was a young Tyrean girl, judging from her dark eyes and hair and kopi-colored skin. Gavin motioned to her as he passed that she could close the doors behind him. His mother had a talent for training slaves: even a girl barely in her teens like this one would wait attentively and respond to the smallest signal. Of course, Gavin wasn’t so much different, was he?
“Mother,” Gavin said. She stood as he came close. He kissed her many-ringed fingers, and she laughed and embraced him, as she always did.
“My son,” she said. Felia Guile was a handsome woman in her early fifties. She had been a cousin of the Atashian royal family, and in her youth the Atashian noble families rarely married foreigners. Andross Guile, of course, had been a special case. He always was. She had the classic, striking Atashian pairing of olive skin and cornflower blue eyes, though her blue eyes bore a wide halo of dull orange around the iris. She had been an orange drafter—though she wasn’t greatly talented, Andross would never have married a woman who couldn’t draft. Slim despite her age, Felia was regal, fashionable, comfortable in herself, commanding without being domineering, beautiful, and warm.
He had no idea how she could stand being married to his father.
She flicked two fingers of her left hand, dismissing the room slave without taking her eyes off Gavin. “So, I hear a rumor that you have a… nephew.”
Gavin cleared his throat. How fast did word travel in this place, anyway? He looked around the room. The slave was gone. “That’s correct.”
“A natural son,” Felia Guile said, her lips pulling taut momentarily. She would never say “bastard.” With her huge palette of facial expressions, she didn’t have to. Over the years, orange had made her both more empathetic and more suspicious. With her natural intuition and intelligence, it made her quite formidable.
“That’s right. He’s a good young man. His name’s Kip.”
“Fifteen years old?” She didn’t say, So you cheated on your fiancée, whom I’ve been urging you to marry for the last sixteen years. Felia loved Karris. Andross Guile had been dead set against Gavin marrying a woman whose family had nothing, like Karris’s, after the war. It was one of the few areas where Gavin’s mother had continued to defy his father. Usually when they disagreed, she would let her objections be known with force and eloquence, and then concede to whatever Andross decided. Not a few times, Gavin had seen Andross change his mind after his mother so artfully surrendered. The disagreement over Karris White Oak, however, had involved screaming, shattered porcelain, and tears. Gavin thought sometimes that if he hadn’t been present during that fight, Andross would have given in, but the man couldn’t lose face in front of anyone, much less his boundary-pushing son.
“He is,” Gavin said.
Felia folded her hands and studied his face. “So, is his existence as much of a surprise to you as it is to everyone else, or more?”
A shiver shot down Gavin’s spine. His mother was no fool. She was as careful to guard against eavesdroppers as anyone, but she had ways of getting to exactly what she meant. After Sundered Rock, when Gavin had staggered alone out of the magical conflagration, wearing his brother’s clothing and his brother’s crown and his brother’s scars under layers of soot and blood, everyone else had taken him to be Gavin unquestioningly. Despite the age difference, the brothers had been mistaken for twins dozens of times, and their mannerisms were uncannily similar. And Gavin had been careful to emulate his brother’s idiosyncrasies of vocabulary and expression. Any differences that had emerged after the war ended had been written off as Gavin having been changed by having to kill his own brother.