Lilith Saintcrow - The Bandit King

It is ever so, with men who are too loyal and too honest. Not even the thought of eventual revenge can restrain their rage when they find they have been used.

Twas why Jierre di Yspres would never have been a fit Left Hand.

This cell did not stink, at least. I paced it—fourteen strides one way, eight another. There was a pallet, and no oublietta .

So I was not meant to be forgotten in a dark hole. At least, not yet.

The chains gave me lee to pace, fastened to a staple driven into the stone of the wall, and a witchlight torch outside the bars gave me no shortage of flat orange light. My face ached, dull pain spreading down my neck, and I winced every time I turned, chains rattling, measuring off each stride with a definite snick of my booted heel.

They had not searched me, and thus had overlooked the knife in my boot and the thin flexible stiletto in my sleeve. The lock on the cuffs would yield to some persistence, and there was no guard at the door. They had simply left me here, Jierre fiercely silent, Luc di Chatillon with an apologetic glance, and Tinan di Rocham looking halfway to tears.

I could expect visitors, but I could not know when. Would she not wish to measure my wounded countenance, see me in chains, present me with the proof?

What could I say?

He sought to take you from me, m’chri. You were the lure that killed a King.

One more reason not to tell her.

Arcenne throbbed above. An army drawing near with siege engines and some thousands, my d’mselle was probably still awake, planning feverishly with her nimble brain, seeking a way through the mire that did not mean shed blood. As dawn approached, the Keep would be readying itself, and the walls of the city would be alive with men, criers dispatched with orders to tell the common people their home was about to be flung into the maw of war.

You will fret yourself into a lather, d’Arcenne. You have waited in a prison cell before. Do so again.

The last time I had been trapped in a donjon, it was waiting for the Duc d’Orlaans to send a knife in the dark—because for all his bluster, he would not have had me publicly beheaded. It would have meant he feared me, did he put me before the crowd as meat.

Timrothe d’Orlaans flatters himself that he fears no man.

That waiting had ended with Vianne’s voice in the darkness. Captain? Are you there?

Would this one end with her voice in the dark as well? My d’mselle was too soft to kill me—but someone else, perhaps di Cinfiliet, might not be.

The chains clashed. I had reached their limit and stood facing the bars. I heard footsteps, and the soft brush of a woman’s skirts.

Vianne. Please. Come, hear my tale. I have woven tales for you before. Fine ones, simple ones, and ones to ease your pain.

Instead, appearing in the arc of witchlight, I beheld the worst that could befall me yet.

My father, Baron d’Arcenne himself, his blue eyes alight and his face set with particular displeasure. And beside him, her dark eyes grave, holding to my father’s right arm with a hand whose knuckles had turned pale, was my mother.

More shame, hot and acrid, eating the last bit of hunger in my belly. I had not supped, and neither had Vianne before the ride to the temple.

My father stood, staring through the bars. Other footsteps halted—a Guard, of course, probably one of my men. As family to a traitor, and the hosts of the Keep where the Queen did reside, they would not be left here alone.

I could have laughed and told Vianne she need not have worried. The quality of my father’s spine would not let him free a son from a prison cell, even an innocent one.

I learned as much when I was nine years old and accused of stealing apples.

My father, straight and unbending, gray feathering at his temples. I met his gaze with an unflinching stare of my own.

“Perseval,” my mother said in her softest and most inflexible tone. “Greet our son.”

The blue of his eyes was so like mine. I wondered, with the resemblance between us so marked, how I could have become what I did.

“That is no son of mine,” my father replied. But quietly, to keep this a private matter.

My mother’s hand tightened. She dug her fingers into his arm and pulled, leaning, her dark gaze fixed past me to the wall. Of course, she would not like the look of iron bars. “Perseval.” A world of meaning in those three syllables, accented sharply at the beginning to make them not a question or a demand, but a simple reminder.

“M’fils.” My father nodded, shortly, as someone stopped past my arc of vision. A gloved hand—a man’s hand—presented a key to my father.

I retreated. The chains sang their unlovely music. “Père,” I greeted him in turn, without a nod. But it satisfied my mother, whose grasp on my father’s arm eased slightly.

It was my mother who took the key and unlocked the barred door, and my mother who swept through, leaving it ajar. My father stayed outside, stiffly, his gaze turned flat and inward.

“Mère.” I accorded her a nod, an approximation of a bow, accompanied by metal sliding and rubbing. You should not leave the door so. You are careless as Vianne, ma Mère.

“Oh, Tris.” And she took me in her arms, ignoring my father’s disapproval, expressed only in a clearing of his throat. He was right—she could have passed me the key, slipped something into my sherte, committed a treachery of her own. “My dear, my own. What happened ?”

Of all the things that could disarm me… “Vianne,” I said into my mother’s hair. Her perfume was light, a mix of floral water and sunshine, a smell remembered from childhood as safety and softness. “Is she hale? Is she well-guarded?”

“Better guarded than ever.” My father pushed the door open farther, took two steps into the cell. Now it was crowded, three bodies instead of one, and the chains a fourth body. And his rage, taking whatever space was left. “My own son. My own son .”

“She says you must be called to account for the papers. That there must be an explanation, and you will be called to give it before the Cabinet.” My mother pressed her soft cheek to my unshaven one, and kept herself between Perseval d’Arcenne and me.

I suddenly felt smaller than I was accustomed to, as if I were much younger. But does she weep? Is she well?

“Sílvie.” My father made a restless movement. “I would speak with my son.”

She let loose of me and half-turned, spreading her arms slightly to bar his passage. “ Your son, now? Ah, yes. I carried him inside me, Perseval, and had the birthing of him as well. Until your suffering can match that, he is our son, and I shall thank you not to forget it. And I shall not let you speak until your tone takes on some kindness.”

“The papers are damning ,” my father hissed, leaning forward with his hand to his rapier-hilt. “I read them myself. That woman wears the Aryx, it abides by her touch, she is the Queen, and her orders are given . I counted us lucky our family had remained untainted by treachery. What else did they teach him at Court, Sílvie? Beyond how to lie to his family, his Consort, his liege?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but my mother did before I could. I could never remember a time she took him to task without a laughing look or a simple grace that let him keep his pride, but now she turned on him with a ferocity I had scarce suspected in my gentle, ever-decorous dam.

“ You said someone had to account for the provinces at Court, best it be us, and that he was seventeen and old enough to whore, hence old enough to catch the King’s eye. Do you not recall it, sending my boy into that den of wolves they call Court?” Between us, the slim shape of my mother was a line too easily breached. She is a small woman, like Vianne, and barely reached my father’s chin.