It’s the little things that get you.

“You stupid, stupid man,” Eirene said. She threw back her liquor. “I spoke with him last night. Do you know that he is quite enamored with you? With all these legends you’ve cultivated around you. He believes them all. He thought when he found you in that galley that he’d been sent by Orholam himself to rescue you. That it was destiny. Young, no men in his life, you understand. Puts you on a pedestal.”

“He’s a good boy. Not a boy much longer, either,” Gavin said truthfully.

Another glass of liquor appeared in her hand, but she waited until the servant—who avoided even looking in Gavin’s direction—was fully out of earshot before she continued. “Do you know that if you’d told him honestly why you didn’t want to come to Rath, he likely would have turned his back on all his family and gone with you? But you’re a liar. A fearful little man who wraps tales around himself like cloaks. You’re empty inside all those cloaks, Gavin Guile. He would have defied even me, who has been both mother and father to him. You understand? I’m having to manage him carefully even now, to make sure he doesn’t try to come rescue you or some foolishness. But I’ll watch. I won’t let him tie himself to you. You’ll get no help from that quarter.”

“And you’re going to silence an entire crew?” Gavin asked.

She didn’t like that. “It can be done,” she said. “I haven’t decided yet if I must do it.”

There was only one way to silence a hundred and twenty-two sailors. She’d sequestered them; now she was deciding if she’d kill them. How long could you even feed so many imprisoned men without word getting out? How long before one of them remembered Gavin had claimed to be Dazen, and traded that information in hope of gaining freedom?

“So, back to my question,” she said. “What is your plan, and how do you think you can get there from here?”

He was silent, but not even silence could hide all the truth from this woman.

“Because I have a plan,” she said, and there was nothing remotely pleasant in her tone. “My plan is to find out your plan, and then to allow you to achieve it, if you are indeed so capable.”

“But,” he said tentatively.

“But.” She smiled at him, big white teeth like tombstones in the sun. She grabbed on to the bars of his cell, about to speak, then her thin lips twisted in distaste and she took her hands away from the slick bars. She rubbed her fingertips together, disgusted, and looked up. A servant was there with a kerchief instantly. She took it and waved the servant away. “Gavin Guile, I want to know your plan. I want to know how you define victory so that when, against all odds, you achieve it, it tastes like water in the mouth of drowning man.”

“But that sounds like something bad.” As if puzzled. Patronizing.

Her eyes flashed, but she rolled her shoulders and finished her drink instead of striking him. “You’re many things, Gavin Guile, but you’re neither credulous nor stupid. You’ve got some plan.”

“And now that you have threatened me at length, in what insane world would I tell you about it?”

“This one.”

“Clearly you think so. The point is that you need to convince me of that.”

“If you don’t tell me, I kill you. Right now.” Her tone was flat and insulted and more than ready to kill, and less than remorseful. It was the voice of a woman who’d killed before, and attached no particular significance to the deed. He thought of a boat full of men who might die at her word. Could she get away with such a thing? In Rath? Unlikely. But it wouldn’t do those men or him any good after the fact to be proven right. What really mattered was if she thought she could get away with it, or if she simply didn’t care.

“Well. That isn’t very creative of you,” he said.

She didn’t even crack a smile. His charm was dust here. “Brutality oft accomplishes what creativity cannot.”

“I see that—”

She said, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you, unless it’s—”

“You really must—”

“That counts as another word. And don’t you dare tell what I must or must not do. I will not tolerate another interruption.”

Gavin stopped.

“Test me on this. One word out of turn.” She leveled a flat gaze at the man who had made satraps and Colors tremble, and he saw that she hoped he would test her.

She laughed as if she’d been joking. “Ha! You should have seen yourself just now, Gavin Guile!”

He smirked uncertainly.

“In fact, perhaps you should see yourself!” She looked around in an unconvincing search. “But I see no mirrors here. Why, you know, I know a torturer who claims that he can pluck out an eye with the sinews still attached, and that a man can be made to see his own face. Ought we try?”

A snake turned over in Gavin’s guts, and he felt that fear he’d felt in the war when he’d had to face drafters who’d broken the halo, who stared at him with eyes full of desperation that told him they might do anything. He remembered a man holding a burning slow match in his hand, sparking and spitting, as he sat in the middle of camp on a barrel full of powder, quietly, absently singing, while Dazen and four hundred men crowded into a little cave, hiding from his elder brother’s passing patrols. None of his men could leave without alerting Gavin’s troops and dooming them all, but if the madman moved that slow match to the powder, most of them would certainly die. Gavin—then Dazen—had talked his way out of that. Carefully, and with no magic.

Giving her a moment to make sure she actually meant this to be a question, and that he now had leave to speak, Gavin said, “I’m sure I would be quite a sight for a sore eye.”

Her eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t smile.

“By which I mean, no thank you,” he said.

“So the question is simple, Gavin Guile, but I am not a simpleton to be taken in by your breezy charm and a smile that once weakened hymens for ten leagues around. Tell me less than the full truth, and you will die. Tell the full truth, and I will do all I can to make your victory almost impossible, but totally empty. What say you?”

I say you’re fucking insane and I’m going to ram a sharpened spoon through the side of your neck.

“So you want me to tell you my plan so you can make it nearly impossible, but not quite impossible?”

“And then I will do all I can to make it an empty victory once you achieve it. You see, I believe in you, Gavin Guile.”

She kept saying his name. It unnerved him as much as her flat, hating gaze.

“Perhaps your time in the galley has dulled your wits,” she said. “Let’s say your dream is to father a line of satraps and Prisms and Colors. I’ll let you leave here alive, rather than kill you. But I’ll cut off one of your testicles and crush the other. You’ll live thinking, perhaps, perhaps you can still father sons. And if you do, on your deathbed, I’ll let you know I’ve gelded your son. Do you understand now?”

Gavin said, “You seem to be angry with me for some reason.”

She looked down, shaking her head, incredulous. Then she cracked a grin. “You really are quite charming. I see why you get your way. But not here, Gavin. I’m waiting.”