into a ball and some significant luck was he able to land on the other side without killing himself.
He stood and let the Talent go. There were cries coming from within the walls, but they’d never catch him. Kylar was a wetboy now in truth. He wondered what Blint would say. Kylar had achieved his lifelong dream, and he couldn’t have been more miserable.
“How was it?” Agon asked Captain Arturian, as they walked through the halls of the castle toward the Maw.
“It was . . . awful. Absolutely awful, sir. I’d say it ranks with the worst things I’ve ever done.”
“Regrets, captain? They say he killed one of your men.”
“If I may be blunt, he rid me of a fool that I couldn’t kick out because the man’s sister is a baroness. The idiot had it coming. I know it’s not my place to say, lord general, but you didn’t see Logan’s face. He’s not guilty. I’d swear it.”
“I know. I know, and I’m going to do everything I can to save him.” They passed the guards who held the underground gate that separated the tunnels beneath the castle from those of the Maw. The nobles’ cells were on the first level. They were small, but in relative terms, luxurious. Agon had Elene placed in one of these cells, though her status didn’t afford it. He couldn’t bear to have her put any lower, and if the king asked, he’d say that he wanted her kept close for further questioning.
Agon stopped outside Logan’s cell. “Vin,” he said. “Does he know about his family yet?”
The squat man shook his head. “I’d already lost one man, sir. I didn’t know what he would do if we told him.”
“Fair enough. Thank you.” It wasn’t the dismissal Agon would have given to one of his subordinates, but though the lord general’s rank was the second only to the king’s, the captain of the king’s guards wasn’t technically under Agon’s command. Fortunately, though they weren’t friends, they were on good enough terms that Captain Arturian took the cue and excused himself.
It wasn’t going to be fun to tell a man who’d been jailed for a murder he didn’t commit that his family had been slaughtered, but it was Agon’s duty. He always did his duty.
Before he unlocked the door, Agon knocked as if he were coming for a visit. As if they were anywhere else besides the Maw. There was no response.
He opened the door. The nobles’ cells were ten feet square, all rock polished smooth to prevent suicides. Each had a bare rock bench that served as a bed, and fresh straw was brought in every week. It was luxury only compared to the rest of the Maw, and even with fresh straw, nothing could erase the rotten-egg stench or the ripe tang of massed humanity in an enclosed space that wafted up from the rest of the cells. Logan looked oblivious. He looked like hell. Tears streamed down his bruised face. He looked up when Agon came in, but his eyes took a long time to focus. He looked lost, his big shoulders slouched, big hands open on his lap, hair askew. He wasn’t alone. The queen was seated beside him, holding one of those limply open hands as one would hold a child’s.
Bless the woman. She’d come to tell him herself.
King Aleine IX had totally missed with Nalia Wesseros. Nalia could have been one of his greatest allies. What a queen she would have made for Regnus Gyre. Instead, she’d accepted being pushed to the fringes of Aleine’s Cenaria, even welcomed it, and had done everything she could to mother her four—now three—children. Agon had long suspected that the children were all that kept her alive.
“My queen. My lord,” Agon said.
“Pardon me if I don’t rise,” Logan said.
“None necessary.”
“They say that my father is dead, too. Or they say that he did it. That the king sent men to arrest him for killing my mother. What happened?” Logan asked.
“As far as I know, your father is alive. He arrived with only one or two men. He was attacked outside the city. Someone was trying to wipe out all the Gyres but you. Men were sent to arrest him, but not on the king’s orders. I haven’t found out who did give the orders. Not yet. Those men either fled the city, or they joined your father. I don’t know which.”
“Lord General, I didn’t kill Aleine,” Logan said. “He was my friend. Even