the other chair, a lounging young Death. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Durzo would have used a poison that would leave me in agony.”
“It’s a tincture of ariamu root and jacinth spoor,” Kylar said. “The agony’s coming.”
“A slow poison. So you decided to give me time. What for, Kylar? To apologize? To cry? To beg?”
“To think. To remember. To regret.”
“So this is retribution. There’s a new young killer on the streets doling out what old whores deserve.”
“Yes, and you deserve to lose the very thing that made you betray Durzo.”
“And what’s that, oh wise one?” She smiled a serpent’s smile.
“Control.” Kylar’s tone was flat, apathetic. “And don’t reach for the bell rope. I’ve got a hand crossbow, but it’s not accurate. I might hit your hand rather than the rope.”
“Control, is that what you call it,” Momma K said, her back ramrod straight, not making it a question. “Do you know that rapes aren’t spread out evenly, even among working girls? Some girls get raped again and again. Others never do. The ones who get raped are the victims. The rapist bastards can somehow tell. It’s not ‘control,’ Kylar. It’s dignity. Do you know how much dignity a fourteen-year-old has when her pimp won’t protect her?
“When I was fourteen, I was taken to a noble’s house and enjoyed for fifteen hours by him and his ten closest friends. I had to make a choice after that, Kylar, and I chose dignity. So if you think giving me a poison that makes me shit myself to death is going to make me beg, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Kylar was unmoved. “Why did you betray us?”
Momma K’s defiance slowly faded as Kylar sat there with a wetboy’s patience. She didn’t answer him for a minute, five minutes. He sat with all the patience of Death. By now, he knew, she had to be feeling queasy.
“I loved Durzo,” she said.
Kylar blinked. “You what?”
“I’ve slept with hundreds of married men in my life, Kylar, so I never saw the most flattering portrait of marriage. But if he’d asked me, I would have married Durzo Blint. Durzo is—was, I suppose you killed him? Yes, I thought so. Durzo was a good man in his way. An honest man.” Her lips twitched. “I couldn’t handle honesty. He told me too many unlovely truths about myself, and that hard, dark thing that lives in me couldn’t bear the light.”
She laughed. It was a bitter, ugly sound. “Besides, he never stopped loving Vonda, a woman utterly unworthy of him.”
Kylar shook his head. “So you thought you’d kill him? What if he’d killed me?”
“He loved you like a son. Once you bonded the ka’kari, he told me. A life for a life, he said. The divine economy, he called it. He knew then that he’d die for you, Kylar. Oh, he fought it sometimes, but Durzo was never as unprincipled as he wanted to believe. Besides, he changed when Vonda died.
“I warned him, Kylar. She was a lovely, careless girl. The kind of woman born without a heart, so she couldn’t imagine breaking anyone else’s. Durzo was exciting for her. He was nothing more than her rebellion, but she died before he ever saw through her, so she was always perfect in his sight. She was forever a saint, and I was always spit-in beer.”
“He didn’t love her,” Kylar said.
“Oh, I knew that. But Durzo didn’t. For every other way that he was unique, Durzo thought excitement plus fucking is the same thing as love, just like every other man.” She suddenly hunched over in pain as her stomach spasmed.
Kylar shook his head. “He told me he was trying to make you jealous, make you feel how he felt when you were with other men. When she died, he thought you could never forgive him. Gwinvere, he loved you.”
She snorted in disbelief. “Why would he say such a thing? No, Kylar. Durzo was going to let his daughter die.”
“That’s why you betrayed him?”
“I couldn’t let her die, Kylar. Don’t you understand? Uly is Durzo’s daughter, but she’s not my niece.”
“Then who’s her m— . . . No.”
“I couldn’t keep her. I knew that. I always hated taking tansy tea, but that time, I couldn’t do it. I sat with the cup growing cold in my hands, telling myself something like this would happen—and still I couldn’t drink. A Shinga with a daughter, what more perfect target could there be? Everyone would know my weakness. Worse, everyone would see me as just