all, if Elban was dead. Then she said, “I made a deal with him.” Because there was no point in keeping it a secret. Maybe there wasn’t any point in speaking, either, but she had been holding the bargain poised like a weapon in her mind for so long that she couldn’t put it down without at least showing someone she had it.
Gavin’s eyes snapped alert, which she found satisfying. “What deal?”
“So he’d leave Elly and Theron alone. He was going to take us both with him, next time he went on campaign, and use us to send messages. So there wouldn’t be another ambush.”
A series of complicated emotions cycled through Gavin. Judah waited, like she’d just spun a wheel, to see which would win; but when his face settled, it was into a calm as deep as that of the body on the bed. “Your other secret,” he said, and she nodded. “You know what he would have done to you.”
His tone was casual, passionless but pleasantly interested, and she saw that this was something he was trying on, for when he was Lord of the City. “I do,” she said.
“To both of us, really,” the almost-Lord said.
She nodded again. “It seemed worth it.”
“I feel like I should be angry with you. Maybe I will be, later.”
“That’s fair,” she said. “I knew there was a chance it would make you hate me.”
Then, with a crooked smile, he was himself again. “I don’t hate you.” He paused. “It’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of it.”
Judah felt very tired.
* * *
Elly was with Elban. Theron sat on the sofa, staring into space. Occasionally he stood up and tried to drift out the door, but was patiently rebuffed by the guards. Meanwhile, Gavin paced the room’s perimeter, edgy with waiting, and after a while Judah could almost tell time by the two of them. It became a game to her; every time Gavin completed three full circuits of the room, more or less, Theron would try to leave. She felt dull and exhausted and intensely bored and her mind latched onto the pattern: satisfied when it completed itself, disappointed when it failed. She could almost forget that Gavin was Gavin and Theron was Theron; she could almost see them as gears and springs, spinning around inside a great clock keeping irrelevant time.
The Seneschal entered and her reverie broke. With him came a tight clot of guards, bristling with weaponry and accompanied by the clinking of chains. In the middle of the clot, surrounded on all sides and hooded, was a tall, thin figure with shackled arms. The arms were milk-skinned and tattooed.
The Seneschal crossed to the locked door. With no ceremony whatsoever he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, selected one and opened the door. Then he beckoned the guards and their prisoner inside. “Lord Gavin,” he said. “Judah. A moment, if I may.”
Judah glanced at Theron. His eyes were fixed on the prisoner with a keener interest than usual, but no alarm. He made no movement to rise, and the Seneschal ignored him. Unexpectedly, Gavin held out a hand to Judah.
In the strangeness that surrounded Elban’s return, she had forgotten why he’d left. But here was the Nali chieftain he’d sought, to try and break the bond, and although the great Lord lay dying in the other room, the Seneschal clearly intended to continue his mission. It made sense—if Gavin was to be Lord, it was better that he be unencumbered by unnatural attachments—but suddenly she remembered something Gavin had said, only days before, that he sometimes wondered how other people kept from killing themselves from loneliness. The prospect of being alone in her head, free to think or feel or hurt or love or even kill herself (if she wanted, which she didn’t)—now that it was real, it was alarming. When she took Gavin’s hand she was glad of it, glad of him. Glad of what might be the last few minutes truly together.
They followed the others into the room. It was another bedroom, as Gavin had said, but a strange one. The floor was hard and bare and the cot in the corner, a bare, rough bedstead, made Judah’s seem lushly appointed. The windows were bricked over except for small gaps at the top, through which nothing was visible but sky; a wooden shutter hung above each, so even the gaps could be blocked entirely. The room also held a trunk and a wardrobe, both fastened