The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,235

she heard guards outside the door. Muffled voices. Even laughter. She was a prisoner, then. Something she had better get used to, she supposed. Along with being universally reviled, all she had built ruined, her name used as a cheap joke or a warning lecture—

The door clattered open and she jerked up so suddenly she put a spasm through her back, nearly vomited and was trapped halfway to her feet, leaning on the chair with one trembling arm.

Orso stared at her, frozen. As if he had arranged an expression of righteous fury but on seeing her could not quite disguise his shock. Her belly, and her head wound, and her ripped and bloody clothes took some adjusting to, she supposed. The righteous fury soon returned, though.

“Don’t get up,” he snapped, though it was obvious she couldn’t have without block and tackle. She flopped back into the chair with all the grace of an ale keg with arms. Any trace of dignity she counted one of her least painful losses, at this point.

He shut the door, carefully not looking at her. He had changed, too. Harder. More purposeful. There was no hint of his old languid flourish as he stalked into the room with his fists clenched.

“I was surprised to hear you had given yourself up. I felt sure you’d be slithering away somewhere to hatch some new scheme.” The room was warm, but his voice was cold enough to make the hairs on her arms bristle.

“I knew that surrendering…” Her voice sounded pathetically weak. “Was the best thing I could do…” She was used to holding all the cards. Even with Orso, she was used to holding some. Now he had the entire deck. “For my child—”

“It’s a little late,” he barked at her, “to be thinking about that, don’t you think? Now the dead are stacked five high in the fields?”

Savine had not supposed they would trade quips like they used to. But she had never really seen him angry before. She began to wonder if this had been a terrible mistake. If she should have run while she had the chance, and never stopped.

“Were you a part of this?” He still refused to look at her, jaw muscles squirming on the side of his face. It came to her forcefully that with a word he could have her hanged beside all the rest. She would never have dreamed he would do it until that moment. Now she was not so sure.

Lies would not help her. It had to be the truth. “Yes,” she whispered. “I had a full part in it.”

“I would’ve been amazed if you hadn’t. But somehow I kept hoping.” Orso bared his teeth. “I received a letter, some time ago, warning me of a conspiracy to steal my throne. A plot by members of the Open Council. With friends in the North.”

Savine closed her eyes. Rikke. It could only have been Rikke. She had not merely let them down but betrayed them. Perhaps she really had seen the future. Savine might almost have admired her tactics, had she any emotion to spare. It was very much the sort of thing she might have done herself. Not that it mattered now. When she opened her eyes, Orso was staring at her with the strangest look.

“Why?” he asked.

Savine swallowed. She had planned the best way to frame it, how to subtly shift the blame, each word picked out as carefully as an ensemble for the theatre, but now the excuses burbled out in a half-baked rush. “They were already planning it. Isher, and the rest. I had no choice. I could only—”

“No.” Orso bit off every word. “I mean… why choose him… over me?”

She should have known he would ask. But she had told herself he no longer cared. That it was buried and would never need to be dug up. Now she realised her error, and she stared down at the carpet, her face burning, the breath crawling in her throat.

“What did I do? To make you turn on me?” He stepped closer, lips curling back from his teeth. “Have you even got a heart?”

She did, and it was pounding now. She felt as if her battered skull was going to split. He gripped the arms of her chair with white knuckles and she shrank back, turning her face away as he leaned down over her, snarling, spitting, stabbing at his chest with a finger.

“I loved you. I still fucking love you! How pathetic is that?