they were both still alive and once Elban returned, Gavin would have hated her anyway, she remembered.
Was that his name?
Was. “Darid,” she said again.
“Was not very smart. If he’d had the sense to send a stable boy with a message, instead of making a spectacle of himself, you and I wouldn’t have spent the last week drowning in opium syrup. By the way, if you were pregnant, you aren’t now. The magus saw to that.”
“Gavin,” she said, helpless, desperate.
“Were you pregnant?”
“My back hurts,” she said.
He leaned forward. She sensed his scathing fury and for a moment was afraid he was going to hurt her. Then he spoke, and his voice was so frostbitten, so black and blistered with barely-controlled violence, that she almost wished he had. “So does mine.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t want them to spill over onto her cheeks, but they did. Gavin leaned back again, his anger touched with satisfaction, now.
“Tell me what happened to Darid,” she said. Pleading.
“I’m very sorry, Judah.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. “I’m sorry your life is the way it is. I’m sorry you won’t get to see everything you want to see and do everything you want to do, get married and have a sweet little cottage somewhere and lots of purple-haired babies. But it’s not my fault any more than it is yours. Fucking a courtier would have been bad enough, but at least a courtier would have been smart enough not to get caught. But staff, Jude?” A bitter laugh escaped him. “How many lectures did you give me on that very topic? Don’t fuck the serving girls, Gavin. They have too much to lose, Gavin. You’re being selfish, Gavin. Selfish!” He pointed at her. “You never get to call me selfish again. Ever.”
She couldn’t even wipe the tears away. They ran unchecked.
Ticking off each point on his fingers, he continued. “Elly’s upset. I’ve spent the last week in agony for something I didn’t even do—and in case you’re too selfish for that to bother you, did you miss the part where they stripped you half-naked in front of a room full of guards?”
“Why are you being so mean?” The question came out sounding so childlike, so powerless, that it only made her weep harder.
“Because I have spent the last twenty-two years defending you,” Gavin said, “and this is how you repay me.”
She was stunned into silence. Even her crying stopped. She had thought of Gavin in many ways over the years: as brother and playmate, as a cad and a spoiled child and a silly boy playing soldier. Her confidant, her conspirator; a glorious hope made flesh, because someday when he was Lord of the City her life would be better and so would everyone else’s. Her love. Her burden. Her responsibility. Her friend. Never had she thought of him in terms of debt, or repayment, or owing. “You sound like Elban,” she said.
She meant it to sting, but he didn’t even flinch. Not even inside. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do need to lock you up, if you’re going to keep doing such stupid things.” But then, maybe, the barb went home, because suddenly he looked exhausted. “Why did you do it, Jude? Were you that lonely? I do everything I can for you, you know that. Why?”
Now he was the one who sounded like a child. Dry-eyed, she said, “Tell me what happened to Darid. Did they let the hounds have him?”
She felt a sick burst of something from him. She didn’t know what it was. The sadness vanished and he went cold again. “First they castrated him. Then they cut him open. Then they cut his throat. When they were done, they threw him on the trash heap. Whatever the crows haven’t eaten is probably still there.”
She couldn’t talk. He stood and walked to the door. Then he stopped.
“They didn’t spike his head,” he said. “I did that much for you.”
* * *
She didn’t know how long she lay there after that. Darid was dead and it was her fault and Gavin hadn’t even untied her hands. When she heard the door open again she didn’t bother to lift her head. These footsteps were heavier, and the chair creaked as someone sat down. She counted her heartbeats in silence. Ten. Twenty.
“Well,” the Seneschal said finally, “I did warn you.”
Had it been him, and not the magus, who she’d heard speaking those words through a cloud of opium? Either way, she saw no