His fingers still dug painfully into her arm but he was no longer shaking her. “If you’re wasting my time,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “I will knock all of your teeth out and beat you unconscious.”
“Deal first.”
He hit her. White flashes filled her vision, then cleared.
“Deal first,” she said again.
He hit her a second time and stunned her—but the Seneschal had hit her harder the week before. If Elban had been hitting her as hard as he could she would be unconscious already, or at least on the floor. This beating was for effect. Which meant that he wanted to hear what she had to say. An ugly hope surged inside her.
“Everyone else gets left alone,” she said through thick, clumsy lips.
He raised his hand again. She didn’t flinch. He grunted and let the hand fall. “Fine. If your offer is sound, my heir can keep the Tiernan. We’ll pay Porterfield off. She was getting too arrogant, anyway. I hate an arrogant woman.”
“And Theron lives.”
He shrugged. “Whatever.” Dropping her arm, he folded both of his own across his chest and waited.
She took a deep breath. “Gavin and I feel the same things,” she said. “Wherever he is, wherever I am.”
“Wasting my time, foundling. Telling me things I already know.”
Judah held out her left arm. Where her palm met her wrist, just above where her bandages had been a moment before, a fresh scratch stood out, raised and red. “Do you see this scratch? Gavin did that when you hit me.”
As they watched, the scratch redrew itself, deeper. Wherever Gavin was, he had suddenly found himself dazed and in pain, and he wanted to know why. Elban’s eyes narrowed. Judah pointed to a curl on the end of the new scratch. “This means he’s worried.” She drew a finger down the curve. “He wants to know where I am.”
Elban’s eyes grew wide. “A code.”
“Since we were children.”
“You use pain to communicate.” Slowly, a smile blossomed on his face: full of fascination and pleasure, it was the first genuine smile she had ever seen there. “Oh, that is very beautiful, foundling.”
She pushed down the sick feeling that smile gave her. “You’re taking Gavin on campaign as soon as Elly is pregnant, aren’t you? Take me, too. Put me with a different regiment. You’ll never be caught unaware again.”
She could see his mind at work on the idea. Unfolding it; examining every facet, all of its possibilities.
“How should I respond?” she said. “I can tell him I’m fine. I can tell him where I am. I can tell him you hit me. Or I can tell him you’re about to knock all my teeth out and beat me unconscious.”
“I’m still deciding about that.” But he licked his lips. “Tell him you’re fine.”
Holding up her arm so Elban could see, she drew the quick crosshatch that meant all well—although she didn’t believe it, not at all, not the way Elban was looking at her. Her cheek throbbed and her burned arms were on fire.
Elban reached out and touched the scratch. It was gentle, that touch. Almost a caress. It was also revolting. “Do we have a deal?” she said.
“I could just take you, now that I know,” he said. His nostrils flared. She realized that his breathing was fast and ragged. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. “But yes. We have a deal. Now get out of here. Go to the kitchen and tell them to give you some ice for your face, so you’re no uglier than usual for the ball.” He licked his lips again, his eyes still fixed on the scratch. “Go quickly. Before I do something I regret.”
She didn’t have to be told twice. As she fled the room, she wondered, uncomfortably, what kind of thing would make Elban, monster that he was, feel regret. She didn’t want to know. She suspected she would probably learn.
But Elly never would, and Theron would be safe.
* * *
For the ball, great chandeliers had been hung from the wrought-iron roof of the solarium, glittering crystal that refracted the light of the candles inside them until they blazed like miniature suns. The mezzanine balconies were filled with musicians. The glass panels in the walls had been opened and outside them, the garden, too, was lit; the paved walks were strung with colored lanterns, and the galleries were filled with acrobats, illusionists and every kind of dancer Judah had ever heard of. Dancers with swords, dancers with fire, dancers wearing