Free The Bandit King by Lilith Saintcrow

D’Orlaans’s lie would help me give an even greater falsehood the ring of truth.
    “A pretty tale.” Her shoulders slumped, came up again to bear that burden, one far too heavy for her. “Which presents a pretty choice indeed.” Brittle, chill, and royal, the tone she had found so recently. A curl of dark hair feathered over her ear, loosening itself from the braids as if eager for my fingers. “Whatever alliance I have made will crumble, for I built it on the strength of my Consort and the loyalty of his father. If I cast aside the son, what will cement that loyalty?”
    I could have laughed fit to wake the dead. My father’s loyalty would never be in question.
    “Or,” she continued, “I could keep the son at my side, and wonder when the blade will find my own heart.”
    Is that what you think?
The strength spilled out of me. I sat down hard in a clash of chains.
    “I think we understand each other.” Her chin was still tilted up. Still no quarter asked, and would I beg for respite? Her dark eyes were terribly sad, and determined. “What dagger do you have reserved for me, once I no longer fit your plans? Once I am no longer your lure?”
    Dear gods.
My mouth was dry as high summer in the Tifrimat wastes, where the sand burns itself to glass and sorcerous salamanders roam. Did she think I would strike at her? “Vianne—” A harsh croak, not even fit to be called her name.
    “When, Tristan? When am
I
expendable?”
    What? I would never… I could not.
Was that what she expected? How could she misjudge me so?
    Except it was not a misjudgment. She was right to accuse me thus, though she may not have known how right. My heart turned traitor to match the rest of me and cracked inside my chest. “No.”
    “That,” she observed, “is not an answer.” And with a swirl of her skirts, she turned as if truly meaning to leave me to the darkness.
    She did not
believe
me.
    “Vianne—”
Her name almost choked me. “Vianne, no.
No
.”
    She paused next to the door, and there was a faint fading hope that she was merely playing her hand again, feinting at her exit to force a cry from me. She had never been one for those games at Court, and was even less now.
    Her head turned slightly, that was all, and she spoke over her slim shoulder with a noblewoman’s air of dismissal. “I am reserving most of the papers di Narborre lost for another turn in the game. Sooner or later the Council will call for you, and I have no doubt you will be set free. I will not be able to avoid it.” She took in a sharp, sipping breath. “So. Plan my death well, should it come to that pass. For I would wish it to mean something.”
    “Vianne—” The quick tongue I had never possessed when it came to her failed me utterly. “I—”
    “I bid you farewell,” she said formally, and swept from the cell. The door clanged shut, the lock catching itself. Her footsteps faltered as she reached the end of the hall. Mayhap her vision was blurred with tears, the same tears that would be uselessly spent on a pillow or a kerchief instead of on my shoulder.
    Her guard, whoever it was, said something in a low, fierce tone. Twas Jierre, and he had heard it all.
    Dear gods.
I had never been one for prayer before, fashionably irreligious like most of the Court. Yet I found myself pleading, as if the Blessed were petty bureaucrats and I a supplicant for some sinecure or another.
    The coldest part of me settled into its corner, the meat inside my skull nimbly running, running like a courser.
This is salvageable
, the cold part said.
She needs you. You will be free and able to prove yourself to her soon enough.
    How long was I to cling to salvageable before I turned loose of such wreckage, opened my veins or took a draught of poison? No, poison was woman’s work, unfit for a nobleman. Falling on your sword was the accepted practice in Tiberian times.
    The chains clattered like the cries of the Damarsene damned. There was no sword to fall on here.