caved in. Nathaniel Magus, who sat at his side, had covered the wound in bandages and padding, but the dressing didn’t disguise the concave shape of Elban’s skull. The magus looked up at Judah. His expression was grave, but—as with the Seneschal—she saw a faint excitement there, buried deep. The same excitement lurked on the guards’ faces. For all she knew, it showed in hers, too.
Her voice soft with horror, Elly said, “Can you help him, magus?”
“Do you want him to?” Judah said without any horror at all.
“Treason, Judah,” the Seneschal said, but without much conviction.
The magus shook his head. “No, I can’t help him. His skull is shattered. But I’ve made him comfortable.”
And Elban did seem comfortable. The rise and fall of his chest was slow but steady, and what was visible of his face was calm. He looked more like Gavin than ever. “If it’s not treason to ask,” Judah said, “what do we do now?”
“There’s nothing to do but wait.” Reluctantly, the magus added, “I can hurry things along a little.”
“No.” The Seneschal was firm. “Let death come when it will.”
So they waited. Food was brought into the parlor: more cheese and meat, but also sweet pastries, fruit and soft bread. Gavin felt that someone should stay in the bedroom with Elban, but clearly neither Judah nor Theron was suited to the task, so it fell to Elly and Gavin. They took turns: one would sit and watch while the other sat and ate. The Seneschal came and went; he didn’t eat or drink, and it occurred to Judah that he never had, in her sight. When he was in the parlor, he received a steady stream of messages delivered not by pages but by guards, who whispered them in his ear or passed them to him on slips of paper. He didn’t share their contents.
Judah gorged herself on the pastries, which were fresher than she was used to. Then she grew bored with eating, and bored in general. The second door was locked; a moment after Judah tried it, Theron did. Five minutes later, he tried again. And five minutes after that. She expected him to try to pick the lock and was disappointed when he didn’t.
So they passed the day, Theron alternating between the window and the locked door and Judah restless, pacing or sitting or making strained conversation with whoever wasn’t with Elban. “You’d almost think we loved the old monster,” she said at one point to Elly.
“He can’t hurt us anymore,” Elly said grimly. “And death is death. It deserves respect.”
The longer Judah sat, the more surreal the situation seemed. All of the evil Elban had wrought in their lives over the last few months was simply...ending. Drifting down the black river to the sea, as the magus would say. She felt strangely cheated. When the magus went away to rest and the Seneschal was drawn out of the room by one of his many messages, Judah drifted into the death room. Elban would not want her, so she took a petty pleasure in being there.
Gavin sat next to the bed. The bandages covering the Lord’s skull showed faint blooms of blood, but he remained quiescent, his long snowy hair lying gracefully on the pillow. From a certain angle, Elban might open his eyes at any moment and smile his cruel smile. As Judah watched, one of the long pale hands on the quilt twitched, as if it wanted to hit her.
“He was a monster and I hated him,” Gavin said, “and now he’s dying.”
“Not very satisfying.”
Gavin’s head fell, limp, against the thickly upholstered chair. “He’s my father, Jude.”
Technically true. But all she felt was a wish that the body on the bed was not so quiet, that it was racked with pain. He should suffer more. He deserved to suffer more. But there was no point in saying any of that to Gavin, who already either knew it or wouldn’t want to hear it. So instead, she said, “You’re going to be Lord of the City.”
Gavin took a deep breath and looked at her. “Yes, I am. Do you think I’ll be good at it?”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Once she would have said yes, unequivocally, but she was no longer sure. “If you do what Elly tells you.”
“And what you tell me.”
“No. Not me.” Because Elly would want to do what was best for Highfall. Judah wasn’t sure that she did. She wasn’t sure what she wanted at