Page 18

Boradrith was at the black window when she came in, the one that looked out on nothing but dead sky. He didn't turn.

"Say it plainly, Mother. You didn't walk down three levels to admire the view."

"Your consort has a lover."

He went still. Not shocked, but weighing. She'd raised him to weigh before he felt, and most days she was proud of it. Today it only made him harder to read.

"You have proof?" he asked, "or you have a feeling? With you those have looked alike before."

"I have a servant who saw them a hand's breadth apart in the east corridor, and neither of them breathing right. I have a thermal record from the deep caves. Two signatures, lying still together, the better part of an hour." She set each piece down without heat, the way she set stones on a board. "And I have a guard who watched her guard fold his tail-guard away from your son's reaching hand. Like a father. Not a blade."

"Her guard." A pause she felt in her own chest. "Kavren."

"Mine," she said, and let him hear what the word cost.

Boradrith turned from the window at last. He looked older in the amber light than he had that morning, and he'd looked old that morning.

"What do you want, Mother? You've clearly decided already."

"I want the human out of the line before she turns it the way she's turned everything else. I want the boy watched by people who answer to blood and not to her. And I want that soldier's error dealt with quietly, before the young ones in the barracks find a second reason to sharpen their teeth." She folded her hands. "I want you to be a king about this, and not a tired man who liked having her in the room."

"I am always a king about this. It is the only role I have ever been allowed." He said it without self-pity, which was worse. "I'll handle it."

"Handle it how?"

"I'll go to her myself."

It was the wrong answer and she knew the shape of it at once. "You send men for this. You don't walk to it. Walking to it tells the court she still matters to you."

"She does still matter to me." He met his mother's eyes. "That was never the part I hid from you. Go to bed, Mother. You've won. Let me lose it with some grace."

*** Diana ***

He came to her rooms that evening alone, and that told her more than any warrant could have. Kings don't walk to you when they mean to be cold. They send men with quiet faces.

She'd known since midday. The servants had stopped meeting her eyes, and councillors she’d sparred with for a year suddenly had somewhere else to be when she came down a corridor. She hadn’t needed it spelled out. She’d spent the afternoon holding Plovus longer than she needed to and saying nothing to Kavren she couldn’t have said in front of a stranger. It was the only goodbye either of them was going to get.

"Sit down, Diana," Boradrith said.

"I'll stand, thank you. I sit when I want a man to think I'm relaxed, and we're a bit past me managing you."

The ghost of a smile crossed his tired face. "We are."

"Your mother came to see you today. I heard the corridors go quiet. I assumed it was either that or the sun finally quit."

"The sun's holding. For now." He stood just inside the door, hands loose at his sides, a king with nowhere he wanted to put them. "Is it true?"

She could have lied. She was very good at it, better than anyone he'd ever kept near his throne, and they both knew that too.

"Ask me the real question," she said. "You didn't walk down here about a thermal log."

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

He nodded slowly, the way a man nods at a number he'd already added in his head and only wanted confirmed. He didn't shout. She'd braced for a great many reactions over the years and never once for this one, which was quiet.

"I won't insult either of us by playing the wounded husband," he said. "We both know what we were. An arrangement two clear-eyed people made and kept honestly. I never lied to you, and you never once lied to me until you had to. I'd counted that as the best part of my court."