Sometimes in the morning they cuddled while he was barely conscious, and it had become her favorite time of day. Once or twice her shift had ridden up during the night and she had found herself spooned against him, skin to skin. Well, maybe her shift didn’t ride up all by itself, and she wouldn’t have dared it if she didn’t know he’d been out for hours the night before and wouldn’t possibly wake up.

It made her warm just thinking about it. Why not? part of her asked. So there were the religious reasons. Can an ox and a wolf be yoked together? She didn’t even know if Kylar believed in the God. He always got uncomfortable when she talked about it. Her foster mother had told her to make her decisions before she got her heart involved, but that was water under the bridge and down the river and around the bend. Uly needed her. Kylar needed her, and she had never been needed like that before. Kylar made her feel beautiful and good. He made her feel like a lady. He made her feel like a princess. He loved her.

He practically was her husband. They said they were married, they lived together, slept in the same bed, acted as father and mother to Uly. Probably the only reason she hadn’t already made love with Kylar was that by the time he actually touched her most nights, she was so tired she could barely move. If he tried in the morning what he did at night, she’d have surrendered her maidenhead in about five seconds. She could almost feel his breath in her ear. She imagined doing some of the things Aunt Mea had talked about so blithely—things that had set her face burning, but sounded ever so wonderful. She was feeling so brazen that she even knew which one she’d try first.

Didn’t the scriptures say “let your yes be yes and your no be no”? She’d said she was Kylar’s wife. He’d said he was her husband. She’d take him past the ringery Aunt Mea had told her about and they could formalize things in the Waeddryner way later. Afterward.

Kylar sat up in bed and she leaned close behind him, her hands moving to the ties of her dressing gown. She opened it.

“Gods,” Kylar said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek without turning around far enough to see the rest of her, “I’ve got to piss like a warhorse.”

He stood and started pulling on clothes. For a moment, Elene was frozen. Her dressing gown hung open, her body exposed.

“What are we shopping for?” Kylar asked, pulling his tunic over his head.

She had barely laced up her dress when his head poked out of his tunic.

“Well?” he asked.

“What?” She felt like someone had just dumped cold water over her head.

“Oh, Uly’s birthday, right? We getting her a doll or something?”

“Yes, that’s it,” she said. What had she been thinking?

17

Tenser performed his job capably enough, Vürdmeister Neph Dada thought. At one point, he even managed to cough up blood. For the time being, his performance would be remembered as cold-blooded defiance. Once he was exonerated, it would be reinterpreted as brave defiance.

The man Tenser was alleged to have murdered, the Cenarian Baron Kirof, had never been found. But on the troth of the Cenarian captain of the guard who said he’d seen Tenser do the deed, Tenser was quickly found guilty. The announcement of his punishment from the Godking’s own mouth had garnered gasps. The Cenarian nobility had expected a fine, perhaps imprisonment with credit for time already served, maybe deportation to Khalidor. That he would be thrown into the Hole was viewed as worse than a death penalty. Of course, that was the point.

Tenser couldn’t very well infiltrate the Sa’kagé if he were dead or deported. By doing time in the worst gaol in the country, he would earn unrivalled credibility with the Sa’kagé. When Baron Kirof was produced—alive—Tenser would be exonerated and he would again have all the access of a Khalidoran duke—but, more important, he would pretend to hold an abiding hatred for the Godking for his false imprisonment. Duke Tenser Vargun would offer the Sa’kagé whatever they wanted. And then he would destroy them from within.

The Godking, as always, had more than one plan. By punishing a Khalidoran duke so severely, he showed that he was a just ruler. The Cenarians who were wavering would have one more excuse to submit. They would go back to their lives and the noose would only tighten on the rebels as their friends abandoned them.

At the same time, the news of Tenser’s imprisonment would overshadow anything else, so today he was releasing dozens of criminals from the Maw and incarcerating hundreds of suspected rebels. With the shocking news about Tenser, people would barely notice.

After the sentence was announced, Neph escorted Tenser and the guards to the Hole.

Tenser looked at him suspiciously. A lot of Khalidorans didn’t think much of their long-vanquished Lodricari neighbors, but with Tenser, the antipathy seemed both general and personal. “What do you want?”

“Just to share some news that might be helpful,” Neph said. He couldn’t hide his pleasure. “Baron Kirof has disappeared. Someone kidnapped him, apparently.”

The blood drained from Tenser’s face. If the baron was lost, he would never leave the Hole.

“We’ll find him,” Neph said. “Of course, if we find him dead …” Neph chuckled. If Kirof was dead, Vargun was useless. If useless, a failure. If a failure, dead. With magic, Neph opened the iron gate that separated the castle’s tunnels from the Maw’s. “My lord? Your cell awaits.”

Jarl rubbed his temples. They’d been interviewing prisoners released from the Maw all day. The prisoners had only learned of the coup after the fact, when wytches appeared, searching for something. The wytches left empty-handed, so it didn’t seem important.

What was important was that a former brothel manager called Whitey had been awake when two guards had led a prisoner toward the Hole. He’d been awake and he’d stayed awake. He swore that neither the two guards nor their prisoner, a big blond naked man, had left.

Furthermore, Whitey recognized one of the guards, a foul man who’d been on Jarl’s payroll, whom Jarl had sent to the castle with a very specific task. The wytches coming after them had gone as far as the Maw, but there had been no sounds of fighting, no indications that they had seen anyone. It was impossible, and Whitey couldn’t make any sense of it.

Jarl dismissed Whitey. “Is it possible?” he asked Momma K.

“What do you think,” she said, stating the question.

“What are you talking about?” Brant Agon asked.

“It proves he was alive later than we thought,” Jarl said.

“And we know that the head they put up wasn’t his,” Momma K said. “That’s suggestive.”

“Gods,” Jarl said.

“What?” Brant asked. “What?”

“Logan Gyre,” Jarl said.

“What? He was killed in the north tower,” Brant said.

“What would you do if you had just killed a guard deep in the Maw and were changing into his clothes when you saw six wytches were coming your way? There’s only one way out, and that way was blocked by the wytches,” Jarl said.

Brant was thunderstruck. “You’re not saying Logan jumped into the Hole,” Brant said. He’d been down to the Hole once.

“I’m saying Logan Gyre might still be alive,” Jarl said.

“Hold on,” Momma K said. She got up and started looking through a stack of papers. “If I recall correctly …ah, here. Remind me that we need to give this girl a bonus. She has a regular who likes to brag. ‘Gorkhy throws their bread down the Hole and watches them try to grab it without falling in. He says at least three of the prisoners have been …’ ” Momma K cleared her throat, but when she continued her voice was level. “ ‘Three of the prisoners have been eaten by the others in the time Gorkhy’s been starving them.’ She describes ‘a giant of a man almost seven feet tall. Several times he’s been able to reach bread that Gorkhy tried to throw down the Hole. Gorkhy has special hatred for the man, the one they call King.’ ” Momma K looked up. “This report is only three days old.”