At thirteen? Surely their father wouldn’t be so foolish.

And yet Gavin had never been the same, and refused to speak of it, lashing out at Dazen and hitting him in the face for the first time ever when he wouldn’t let it go. It had opened a rift between the brothers, that innocent needling and that punch. Dazen had thought it was his own fault for pushing his brother too far. He’d seen the tears welling in Gavin’s eyes, like he couldn’t believe he’d hit his little brother either. But he’d stood over him. Hadn’t apologized. Hadn’t ever apologized.

That was where what had culminated at Sundered Rock had started.

I’m sorry, Dazen.

What the hell? I’m sorry, Dazen? I’ve worn this mask too long.

What was I thinking on the boat? Telling them I’m Dazen? Madness. Why would I do such a thing?

They hadn’t even treated him any differently. More importantly, in their brief few days with Antonius Malargos, it hadn’t seemed that any of them had told the boy that Gavin had once claimed to be Dazen.

Regardless, it was a slip. A slip at the top of the rope and you fall a few knots down. But a slip at the bottom of the rope meant a plunge, and Gavin was about as low as you could get.

The scenery rolled by, beautiful but dead to him. Then, as they wound their way up Jaks Hill, someone noticed his eyes were open. Mercifully, instead of smacking his head with something blunt, they merely pitched a blanket over him so he couldn’t see. Sometimes men surprise you with gentility when you least expect it.

Perhaps an hour later, after being slowly walked through a number of doors with the blanket still over his head, Gavin was deposited in a cell and only then allowed to see. He wasn’t there long when a door opened and a woman walked in.

“You willjacked the river dolphin,” Gavin said. “Clever.”

Eirene Malargos didn’t deign to respond. Despite the blanket, he was in a dungeon, which told him pretty much all he needed to know about his prospects.

“Punishable by death, that kind of magic, but undeniably clever,” Gavin said.

Still she said nothing. Eirene Malargos didn’t have her sister’s rare blonde hair, instead she had brown hair in a straight curtain that hung to her chin, sometimes obscuring half her face. Nor could she draft. Nor did she have her younger sister’s voluptuous curves, though it was hard to tell in the man’s tunic and trousers she wore. They did have the same heart-shaped face, and Eirene had an intensity Tisis lacked.

“Everything’s about magic to you, isn’t it? Take you Guiles out of your sphere, and you’re hopeless.” She shook her head. “How do you make the world follow … this? We trained the dolphins. The hard way, with treats and love and consistency and a firm hand.”

“Most likely a lie, but I appreciate the righteous indignation,” Gavin said. “Very convincing.” He swung his feet over the side of his cot and tried to stand. The pain in his ribs took his breath away. Cracked ribs. They’d been bound, and he’d been washed while he was unconscious, though. Maybe he did have a chance. He took a few light breaths, gathering his strength, and stood. There’s a power dynamic that can be seized by sitting when others stand and standing when they sit, or refusing to do so.

He was taller than Eirene Malargos, and meat speaks. The dominance of height and musculature, softened by his attractive face and features, usually undercut resistance quite a bit.

Even women who like women like a good-looking man.

Eirene Malargos frowned, which told him it was working. Of course, being attractive merely opens doors a crack. Especially cell doors.

“May I ask,” he said, “why I find myself in a cell? Apologies for my earlier unpleasantness. I find myself in a great deal of pain. It’s quite enough to make a man cranky.” He winced through a smile.

Careful not to overplay it, Gavin.

The dungeon wasn’t much of a dungeon, in truth. It was merely a cellar fitted with a few cells. It was dry, and there were no rats, which meant they kept cats, but also no sign of fur or odor of cat urine, which meant they kept a staff. With the substantial roof beams here, he had to be in the lower levels of a large house or mansion. So a large, wealthy house in one of the nicest sections of Jaks Hill. It was unlikely to be anything other than the Malargoses’ own mansion.

Which meant, in turn, that he was within shouting distance of his own home. Though he hadn’t visited in years, the Guiles owned an estate here. They were neighbors with the Malargos family. With slightly better position, of course.

It had to be a constant thorn in all the Malargoses’ sides: the Guiles had, a generation past, only owned a sliver of swampland with a sad excuse for a rath on it. The family had made a play for power, binding together families on both sides of the river—but a reversal had left them with only their holdings in Blood Forest and that one, moldy rath. Andross Guile had leveraged that rath into representing Red for Ruthgar. And with the Red seat, he’d forced his way into the best estate on Jaks Hill, which doubtless the Malargos family had hoped to make theirs after the fall of the Maltheos family.

After acquiring the estate, the Guiles didn’t even live here; they rarely visited, and yet the Guiles had the premier estate as Andross’s pride demanded. It was, some said, better than the satrapah’s own, and she had to share her estate with all the machinery of government. And here Gavin was. He’d traveled all over the world, only to return home to a cell.

Eirene said nothing for some time, merely studying him. He kept his face pleasantly neutral, on the off chance that she would claim a misunderstanding. As the Strategist had said, if you want your enemy to fight to the death, cut off all escape; if you want your enemy to retreat, leave a path open. As a young man, Gavin had liked to cut off escape, had liked to overwhelm, dominate, and destroy, even if it carried a higher risk of defeat.

On some signal he hadn’t seen, a servant came from the hallway, where he must have been standing out of Gavin’s line of sight. In a silk-gloved hand, he presented his mistress with a glass of liquor on an electrum tray. There was no second glass.

She drank. Winced.

Gavin could smell it from where he stood. It smelled like burnt peat and fermented giant sweat. He was actually happy she hadn’t offered it.

“What is victory to you, Gavin Guile?”

“Pardon?” he asked.

“What is your plan? It’s plain you’ve been a galley slave. The scabs on your wrists haven’t healed, so you’ve worn manacles within the last two weeks. The stripes on your back are red, but healed, so you’ve been whipped in the last year but not the last month. If you last shaved when you were free, your beard says you’ve been enslaved perhaps six months. That lines up with the Battle of Ru. Surely in all your time on an oar, you were plotting.”

“Perhaps all my plotting was taken up on getting free of slavery. Freeing oneself from slavery is better than most galley slaves manage in six months, after all.”

“Most slaves don’t have my cousin rescue them.”

“So you, ahem, know about that?” Gavin said.

“He signaled us when you arrived in the harbor.”

Oh, the boy had a mirror. That was how Eirene had known to send a galley first thing in the morning to scoop him out of the water. A mirror. Gavin hadn’t even thought of it.