Page 168 of Grave Situation

“How can you be so unfeeling? Can’t you understand what I’m going through? I let your uncle and his friends talk me into unwise choices, and now my daughter?—”

“Do not,” I interrupt, “talk about my sister. Don’t even say her name, or you won’t need to worry about any trial or execution. I’ll gut you right here myself and laugh while I do it.”

I must be suitably convincing, because he closes his mouth. Not for long, though.

“I’m grieving too. It was never supposed to happen.”

“You killed her,” I say flatly, “just as much as if you’d shot the arrow yourself. It was never supposed to happen? What did you think would happen when the zombies came after us? Were you there when that order was given? Did you stop to consider that zombies sent to kill us might actually kill us?”

I watch his face closely, and sure enough, there’s a tiny flinch. He’s every bit as complicit as I thought he was, but this time he keeps his mouth shut.

The silence rides for long moments before I sigh. “You’re going to be executed, and there isn’t any way around it. If somehow the queen isn’t able to manage it, I’ll come back here and take you to the City of Knowledge myself, where you can face the dragons. They’re out for blood.”

“Does it give you pleasure to tell your father he’s going to die?” he asks, and it seems that he’s still playing for sympathy.

“No. I’m just making it clear that no matter what happens next, you will die. I’ll make sure Uncle Domys does, too—and his temple friends. It’s the least they deserve. But you and I both know that no matter what you’ve told everyone else, your brother isn’t capable of learning complex magic on his own. He wouldn’t even have known where to start looking for the spells—or thought his way through the best way to use them. Tell me who else is involved.”

“There’s nobody else,” he declares, but his eye twitches. He’s never been a good liar, which is ironic because he lies all the time.

I shrug. “Have it your way. I’ll find them eventually, anyway. It’s hard to hide that kind of magic at the academy for long.” That’s not exactly true, but he won’t know that, and I’m fishing. Thereisa chance the mage behind this is someone living away from the City of Knowledge, but I don’t think so. It would be much harder to do the research that would have been needed, and someone in the academies has definitely been feeding information to the other side.

Father’s eye twitches again, confirming my assumption, and I push it further.

“It’ll be easy enough to see who’s traveled this way in recent years,” I muse. “It’s not like Uncle Domys would have befriendedthatmany people when he was at the academy.”

His eye twitches for a third time, and I make a mental note to have Master look for the class lists from when my uncle was a student. This also means we can rule out everyone younger than he is, which is helpful.

“They’re not friends,” Father mutters sullenly, and while I manage to hold in my cheer, Leicht’s roar of victory is so loudthat we can hear it clearly through the thick stone walls. Father’s eyes widen.

“The dragons must be restless,” I say casually, as though I didn’t just threaten him with dragon justice a minute ago. “Not friends, huh? Are you sure they’re not fooling you about that? This is a pretty dangerous scheme to trust to someone who’s not a friend.”

Father snorts. “You’ve met your uncle’s friends. None of them have the brains for anything like this. Besides, Domys is ten years younger than—” He stops, but I don’t care. That’s enough information for me to get started with.

I stand and stretch. “Well, I’m glad we had this time together. I was worried that some part of me might regret that we never had a better relationship, but…” I shrug. “You’re not the kind of person I could ever want to have a good relationship with.” I make for the door.

“Don’t you want to know why I did it?”

The words stop me short, and I turn to face him. He’s dropped all pretense of remorse—the sorrow gone from his face, and his lips twisted in a sneer.

“I already know. You’re greedy and power-hungry, a bitter, miserable man with no morals.”

“No morals! I have more morals than your bitch queen! What kind of person buys a husband for her lover so she can control him?”

Leicht’s incredulity echoes through my mind.“Does he really not hear himself?”

“He has no self-awareness.”

“What kind of person sells himself in the hope of gaining power?” I counter. If he was hoping to shock me with the revelation that the queen found Mother a convenient husband so they could be together without complications, I hope he’s disappointed. I’ve known for years—Tia and I listened to theservants gossiping about it before we were even old enough to know what a lover was. “What kind of person makes an agreement, takes money for it, and then plots to betray his own word?”

His mouth works, but no sounds emerge. I wait another moment before turning away to knock for the guards to open the door.

“Good luck with the gods’ justice, Father.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Leichtand I leave early the next morning to rejoin the others, despite my mother’s vociferous displeasure. She wants me to spend at least another day with her, and if the situation wasn’t so dire, she might have convinced me with her argument of “I wasn’t a good mother to you when you were a child, but I want to try harder now that you’re an adult.”

Eventually, I convince her that now is not the time for bonding but that I’ll be back once everything is settled and spend at least a week here—and bring someone special with me. That delights her so much that she manages not to ask the million questions I can see brimming in her eyes, and she immediately sends for her maid so they can plan entertainment and activities for my visit. I leave her to it and slip out.

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